Not long after we moved out of our building on Hays Street in March, I received a telephone call from a county government official inquiring about the old building's availability and whom they should contact.

"Of course, I don't have any money to buy it, but I was told to ask," the caller said as a means of qualification, I suppose.

A few weeks later, I was walking to work over the Ma & Pa Trail between Fallston and Bel Air and when I crested the hill leading to the pond at Heavenly Waters Park, I stopped and did a double take. After almost a week of steady rain, the level of the pond appeared to be way down on one end, almost like it was drying up.

One of the trail monitors must have seen me staring in amazement, because he stopped and explained, "The county says it's leaking, but they don't have the money to repair it."

"So what will they do/?" I asked.

"They say they will probably just let it dry out and return to wetlands," he explained. "They said most of the water in it comes down from the old landfill, anyway."

OK, that would sound reasonable, except what about all the fish and turtles and frogs that live in the pond, not to mention the birds that nest around it and fish and hunt in the water? And, what about the people who fish in the pond or who just like to walk around it for the sights?

I asked my colleague Kayla Bawroski to make some inquiries, and she wrote a story several weeks ago about the pond. As the trail monitor had said, the parks and recreation person Kayla spoke with said the pond would probably just be allowed to return to a more natural state.

The problem wasn't repairing the leak, the person explained, that in itself wouldn't cost too much; however, once the county drained the pond it would have to follow state regulations for returning it to a pond, and that might run $500,000 or more. The county, he said, did not have the money for a project of that magnitude.

That all sounds so plausible until you think a little about the way Harford County government operates.

For instance, they haven't had any money to give the majority of the employees any raises the past three budgets, but they'll always find $5,000 or $10,000 here or three to boost some trusted aide's pay on the grounds they are doing more work or deserving of a promotion. Or they'll let somebody retire and then hire them back as a consultant at a salary many of us would be happy to make for part-time work, because they can't do without the person's "expertise."

The government was so financially strapped three years ago that it resorted to hiring freezes and layoffs, but it could always find a job for some political hanger-on or a family member of some well-connected person. That's not just the David Craig administration, mind you, others have done it, too, but that doesn't mean the taxpayers need to put up with such rhetorical flim-flamming.

This is one reason why I don't blame the residents of Cedarday for questioning why the county has to extend the road running through their community to fix the traffic issues with Cedar Lane and Wheel Road. The county says extending Cedarday Drive makes more sense because it already has a right-of-way, which came courtesy of another administration literally holding a gun to the head of the community's developer to get it. That, my friends, would never happen if the developer had been one of the money men who support these county executives come election time.

Anyway, the public works people argue it will cost millions to acquire rights-of-way to widen Cedar Lane, which is just code for saying the people who own the land along Cedar Lane aren't going to be messed with, for whatever reason.

As for saving money or not having it to spend, like on fixing the Heavenly Waters pond, maybe the parks and recreation people would like to explain why they used a crew over three days in May to remove the board fence along the county's unused property at the corner of Smith Lane and Connelly Road in Fallston, extract the posts and the grade and reseed the old fencerow? Was this a critical project? Who was the fence bothering, the people residing in the graveyard across the street?

I'm not saying the Harford County government is the only hypocrite when it comes to talking about not having money and spending it anyway. Governments everywhere do it, as do big corporations, including the one I work for. Still, it would be nice if just once, instead of saying "we don't have the money," somebody would just say "we don't want to do it" or, more honestly, "it's just not that important to us."