When the need for a long-term addiction treatment center was brought up in Council, the chief was asked why the center hasn't been built yet. New school construction and water & sewer work, blah blah blah were cited as priorities.Chief Hicks has been big on pushing his fight against drugs. While arresting dealers, traffickers and such is a part of that, so is working to reduce the demand for illegal drugs.
As badly as the Hicks administration is failing to get the illegal drug trade off of tribal land, it's doing a worse job of addressing the demand. Sure new schools are important (one hopes the plan is more than just new buildings to address problems with the tribal educational system), but others such as health care, which has been diminishing under Hicks' leadership, are also important. The more people who recover from drug addiction, the less the demand, and the less of a market drug dealers have. If it becomes less and less worth it for drug dealers to come on tribal land, you've won half the battle.
However given these "priorities," how can the chief justify what's been spent on the new theater, which couldn't even attract a decent number of customers before the economy went to hell? How can he justify the upcoming golf course? The tribe is in for some tough times, no matter how much their spin novices try to convince the public otherwise. Not only will the tribe need to curtail its unnecessary spending, it will also need to prioritize, and prioritize properly. Drug addiction treatment is a good deal more important than a fancy, tribally-funded theater or a golf course that's getting the tribe into some serious debt.
Speaking of one of these "priorities," what is the school project costing the tribe? Is it staying within the budget? What is the cost comparable to other similar projects elsewhere? How about releasing these figures chief?
It's hard to believe that the most wasteful tribal administration in history has any kind of priorities at all.
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