“If you fail to plan,” goes the old adage, “you can plan to fail.”

At the risk of beating the proverbial dead horse, my attention this week once again focuses on the seeming inability of our Powers That Be to plan ahead, this time generated by our Monday edition headline, “Tabled: County office building project nearly $1M over budget.”

The brand new, $26 million (and counting) Chenango County Correctional Facility on Chiarino Drive in the Town of Norwich has been operational since what, 2005? And its devising was in the works for several years before that. I remember writing stories about how the West Park Place jail was in a decrepit state back when I was a reporter in the early 90s. The future of that dilapidated facility has long been in question, but here we are in 2008, apparently surprised when cost estimates keep going up on a project we haven’t made significant progress on in years.

That’s an oversimplification, of course, and I don’t pretend to know all the particulars involved. I’m not an architect, or an engineer, or even a county supervisor. I only know what I read in the paper, and perhaps more importantly, I know what I see.