Gregory K. Wolfrey is no longer the leader of Goochland.

I’m not sure he had been since the first undeposited check was discovered in a drawer in the utilities department. Since that time he was no longer inspiring a shared vision amongst the citizenry; instead, he was inspiring a shared paranoia.

Keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs, to paraphrase Kipling, would probably have been a good plan for Wolfrey. It would probably be a good plan for most of us.

In the administration building, things, like nerves, are jumping these days. Questions (except the ones shouted into a microphone and camera) are whispered. Shades are drawn and doors are closed, and the darkness is oppressive, I’ve been told.

In other words, who’s going down next?

This is no way to work, or live. And at some point Goochland is going to have to get back to both.

The budget process is looming, and the irony of creating a new budget when a lot of your money is going toward auditing what was done with the old one, is so obvious it almost, although not quite, triggers a laugh-out-loud response.

Because considering how bare the county’s bottom line was described by Wolfrey last fall, money is now being tossed around like confetti created from shredded documents.

When Commonwealth Attorney Claiborne Stokes told the Board of Supervisors last week that a forensic audit of the utilities department would cost about $20 – 30,000, the board promptly approved, without even being asked, $50,000.

And when the county was warned last year by the Department of Environmental Quality to comply with agreed-upon regulations, it decided to ignore the order, thus incurring an $11,600 fine.

There are other examples; these are just the ones that jumped out at me over the past few days. I am sure I’ll be hearing and seeing more at the meetings I’ll be attending this week.

There seems to be a collective madness descending over the courthouse district, the madness of people who are exhausted by stress and the weariness of either telling, or hearing, lies.

But we’ve all got to keep our heads, because if we lose them at the same time it’s not going to just be a crazy few months. It is going to be a crazy few years!