Comments | Eastern NC Now

Just checking back in, and I see that the Undocumented Racism continues here still.

Commented: Saturday, November 1st, 2025 @ 1:13 pm By: Big Bob 2.0

Van Zant, Those five work for the Big Cheese, they do not work for the public.

Commented: Saturday, November 1st, 2025 @ 7:29 am By: Hood Richardson

That Brazilian girl sure has America liberals figured out. More people should hear her thoughts. The German girl has a lot of courage and deserves political asylum from the globalist tyrants in her home country. A law that can jail a person for daring to criticize a politician is something one would have expected of the Third Reich, not today's Germany.

Commented: Saturday, November 1st, 2025 @ 8:34 am By: Conservative Voter

Why are 5 Board of Education members against having a local lead attorney?

Commented: Saturday, November 1st, 2025 @ 5:56 am By: Van Zant

Impeachment is not enough. Boasberg should be prosecuted and jailed for what he did in Arctic Frost. That was a totalitarian attack on our democracy. Jack Smith should be his cellmate.

Commented: Friday, October 31st, 2025 @ 3:04 pm By: Rino Hunter

Stan, local officials are not excluded from conflict of interest statutes, but the way those statutes work in small counties is that the local official can bid and be awarded a contract BUT they must not take part in the decision making process to decide who gets the bid. If they take part in that decision making process, that can have criminal repercussions as a former county commissioner in Hyde County found out some years ago. As long as those guidelines are followed, a company owned by an elected official in a small county is elgible to bid and be awarded a contract.

Commented: Friday, October 31st, 2025 @ 12:58 pm By: Steven P. Rader

A local atty should be in-place and serve as counsel to the Board. Most, if not all school systems operate in this way and/or have their own in-house counsel. Boards, as needed, hire outside counsel on specific issues and needs, on a case-by-case basis. THE board should hire the local atty.

Billy Mayo was County atty and then Francisco. IF the Bd has local counsel why can't the BOE? City has Holscher as local atty.

As for contracts, I will disagree with most here likely in that I believe conflict of interest prevents an elected official and/or their company from providing services. That's my take and my opinion.

And with that being said, we find BOE and BOC with husband/wife members serving. And with the BOE we have family members in the school system.

The reason I don't worry so much now about the above matters are new board members who seem to be interested in children, the schools, the community and education rather than enriching themselves.

Commented: Friday, October 31st, 2025 @ 11:36 am By: Jeff Williamson

STan, from what I am aware, bid recommendations come from staff, in this case probably the superintendent, but are then voted on by the board. If the board acts as a rubberstamp, it is the staff who make the real decisions. The scheme that went down on the website contract was not only a politically motivated attack on you, but it was an attack on all Beaufort County taxpayers. Why should taxpayers get stiffed for higher cost services from an out of state company, when a local company can do the job better and cheaper? Was this intended as punishment to you for allowing free speech on your site that sometimes embarasses them? If so, then they are punishing Beaufort County taxpayers with their vendetta.

Commented: Friday, October 31st, 2025 @ 10:34 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

Stan, I think the first order of business is to get a solid local primary attorney in place, and then to look at their experience and skill set to see what specialized legal services we would anticipate needing from time to time beyond that skill set. We would then make appropriate arrangements as needed to cover those, and cost factors would be a consideration, but so would theiir ability to handle those specialized areas. I would be open to the most cost effective arrangement to obtain competent backup for those areas where the primary attorney's skill set may be lacking.

The Craven County School Board, for instance, has a local primary attorney whose policy viewpoints are in sync with the community and the board majority. The main area they farm out to a specialized firm is personnel disputes, and that is sent to Tharrington Smith, and occaisionally other matters may also be given to them to handle. Our schools in Beaufort County seem to have fewer of those personnel disputes than larger Craven County.

Commented: Friday, October 31st, 2025 @ 9:49 am By: Steven P. Rader

Stan, I think some heavy politics are involved in the school board taking contracts away from prominent Beaufort County Republicans and giving them for higher bids to competitors out of county. As I recall, they took the website contract away from your company and gave it to an out of state company which wanted a lot more money. Then they took away the school grounds contract from a company owned by the finance chairman of the county GOP and gave it, for more money, to a company from Pitt County. I suspect there are more like that but those are just the ones I have heard of. It all looks like political game playing against local Republicans to me.

Commented: Thursday, October 30th, 2025 @ 9:34 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

What also needs to be recognized are the significant changes in policy that were accomplished at the last school board meeting. The board unanimously adopted my proposal to amend our curriculum policy to prohibit the inclusion of the woke DEI ideology in our curriculum. My motion to remove "gender identity" and "sexual preference" as being part of "discrimination based on sex" both places it previously appeared in our policies was also passed unanimously. Now our Title IX policies are back to reflecting the way Congress wrote them, to protect women, not other groups whose interests are often contrary to those of women.

Success on issues like those reflects talking to and working with other board members. Some of them may not agree with me on every issue, but we agree on some issues, and by keeping open lines of communication, instead of throwing grenades, we can move forward on constructive policy that reflects the viewpoints of our citizens in Beaufort County.

On the issue of the school board attorney, there were two separate groups talking among themselves on trying to get a local attorney. When Daniel Hudson was the first to bring it up before the board, it offered an opportunity to put together a majority to do that. Indeed, our initial decision to put together a Request for Proposals (RFP) to do that was unanimous.

While I have not confirmed who actually wrote the RFP that was presented, it included a kink that divided the board. That was making the local attorney subservient to the out of town attorney, the reverse of the way most school boards and other local government bodies operate. Usually the local attorney is the primary attorney, and brings in specialized assistance from specialized attorneys as needed for lawsuits and some other matters.

I made a motion to rewrite the RFP to make the local attorney the primary attorney, consistent with the usual policy of local boards. The question was raised about Tharrington Smith being brought in as needed on specialized matters, something I had no problem with as it is the usual way legal representation for local government boards work. However, the member who seconded my motion clearly did not want Tharrington Smith involved at all and withdrew the second. Prior to that, I thought we had a reasonable chance of getting a majority to change the RFP. With the second withdrawn, another motion was made to approve the RFP as written, which then passed 5 to 4.

There is a reason why bringing in specialized counsel is sometimes necessary, and is often done by local attorneys for school boards, counties, and cities. Many legal matters are straightforward and have little of nothing to do with policy, but having an attorney familiar with the nuances of handling them makes the odds of success in the legal matter much better.

The example I used was a case I brought on behalf of a high school girl some years ago against Lenoir County Schools. The law and evidence were strongly in my clients favor and I was confident we would be granted the relief we asked for in our written pleadings. However, the local school board attorney, who clearly had no background in such proceedings bungled the school board's case so badly that in my oral argument, I asked for much more far reaching (and much more expensive for the school system) relief and the court granted it. The school system would have saved a lot of money if they had brought in someone specialized in such proceedings instead of having their local attorney try to wing it.

The reason it is important to have a local school board attorney who has similar policy stances to the local community and local board is that while many legal issues have no ideological, philosophical, or political aspects, there are also many issues that arise where law and policy are intertwined and the applicable law can be argued more than one way. When I attended the recent Law Conference put on by the NC School Boards Association, questions to presenters on such issues were always responded to with "ask your local board attorney". When such issues arise, it is best to have a local school board attorney who is in tune with prevailing local opinion of both the community and board.

Commented: Thursday, October 30th, 2025 @ 6:21 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Terry Williams, Word smithing does not work. The issue with the lawyer originated in the Conservative Club more that two years ago. You have sat there more than two years and done nothing about it. If you nit picked your job on the board like you do my writing you would be an effective board member.
I notice the school board meeting has been changed to the same night as the county commissioners meet so I cannon attend an take notes on you and the rest of the RINOs. I will do your nit pick for you on this one. You are going to claim the meeting was changed so athletes could attend to receive their awards from the board. Denying the public access to information and observation about how inept you and your cohorts are is a corruption of the system.

Commented: Thursday, October 30th, 2025 @ 8:01 am By: Hood Richardson