There’s no question that the Timken Park Sports Complex is a magnificent facility that is already attracting the attention of sporting interests and could prove to be an economic boon to Union County.

What is questionable is why Union County Council has only just recently gotten around to authorizing all the money used to pay for its construction.

Council voted unanimously last week to give retroactive approval to the expenditure of approximately $1.5 million in fund balance and rollover funds and general obligation bond proceeds to help pay for the construction of the complex. The authorization was requested by Supervisor Tommy Sinclair who has been conducting research to determine the actual cost of the construction of the complex, the funding sources involved and the authorization of financing for the project. Though the money had already been spent, Sinclair said that the consensus of the attorneys and auditors he’d spoken with was that council should vote to authorize the funds.

In his research, Sinclair said he found documentation that $3.4 million of the funds spent on the $6.4 million facility had been approved by council over the past three years. He said that another roughly $1.6 million in public and private funds did not require council’s approval as they’d been designated by the parties involved specifically for use in the construction of the complex.

Sinclair could not, however, find any record where council had formally authorized the use of the proceeds left over from the three bond issues or the rollover funds. While he did find minutes from an Aug. 13 meeting of the finance committee authorizing the expenditure of up to $1 million in fund balance for the complex, Sinclair said he could find no record of council authorizing the expenditure of the other $1 million in fund balance spent on the project.

This lack of a record of any formal record of council authorizing such a huge expenditure of county funds is troubling. Even more troubling is that no one seems to know if the issue was ever brought before council in the first place.

Sinclair, who has been in office for just two months, doesn’t know, but then neither does council member Dora Martin, council’s most senior member and chairman of its finance committee. Mrs. Martin said it was possible that the matter was never brought before council or that it was, but the minutes regarding the matter have not yet been found.

Why not? Why, given the amount of money involved, is there no record of council voting on the matter? If there is a record then why could it not be found? If there was a vote, that is. If there was no vote why wasn’t there, given the amount of public funds involved?

Public tax dollars are a sacred trust and because of this, their collection, holding and allocation require the most rigorous record-keeping and accounting. When they’re spent, especially in the large sums in question, it should only be after the expenditures have been proposed, discussed and voted on in formal and open session of council. There should be a taped record of that meeting and a formal set of minutes kept on file for easy access by the supervisor, members of council, county staff and the general public for review.

We’re not pointing fingers at any particular person or group; we’re simply saying such a troublesome situation should never have happened in the first place and should not happen again. The Timken Park Sports Complex is a magnificent achievement and it requires an equally magnificent record of its development from start to completion, including the monies spent on its construction. The county should have that complete record; and the fact that it doesn’t and that council did not until now authorize all the public funds involved is and will remain troubling until the records — if they exist — of that authorization are found.