Why Beaufort County is in the economic mess it is in | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

Part IV of The Economic Impact of Building a New Jail

    At the recent annual "planning retreat" of the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners one of the presenters, Dr. William Rivenbark, reviewed the financial status of the county. He identified the strong aspects as well as the "yellow flags" (water funds) that the numbers showed.

    He also commended the board on having a Capital Improvement Plan. He defined the CIP as: "a multiyear planning document for capital assets beyond the capital budget. The capital budget is often presented to the governing board for approval as a part of the CIP." He went on to say about the CIP:

    • Covers a multiyear period, normally five years beyond the capital budget.

    • Includes capital assets to be acquired in each of the planning years, with capital assets in years 1 and 2 representing higher priority.

    • Forecasts the cost of acquiring the assets, with some CIPs accounting for inflation.

    • Identifies the funding sources to finance the capital assets.

    In other words, good government requires sound planning. The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners, under the current chairman, has no such process. If there is a CIP that meets the criteria Dr. Rivenbark presented its news to us. We'd like to see it. There is no long range capital projects planning process. That is precisely what caused the school bond building program to go $6.4 million over budget. That is exactly why millions of dollars were wasted on speculative real estate deals, most of which were executed "off budget," on the fly, because a snake oil salesman came in with his hand out. He got everything he asked for, regardless of whether it was in the budget or not. And ironically, that is precisely why a jail is being proposed to be built six miles away from the courthouse. That idea was not in a CIP. In fact, it was not even on the table until last February and by this February contracts had been awarded to begin the process of building a 20-30 million project.

    And talk about "planning" show us how they planned for the half million dollars they just spent on the existing jail. Show us a preventative maintenance plan as a part of either the annual budget process of the CIP.

    At the same time that this railroad was running full steam ahead, the citizens of the northeastern part of the county learned that they were losing their hospital. To the best of our knowledge no discussion was held by the Board of Commissioners about whether the county should seek to address the emergency health needs of that part of the county by weighing whether those needs were more important than building a new jail at this time. Ditto whether the highest and best use of the parcel of land they call the Chocowinity Industrial Park could better be used as a middle school site.

    In fact, they decided on the first jail site before determining whether the land use plans would permit such a facility in the Washington Industrial Park. Now they have done essentially the same thing with the Chocowinity Industrial Park. They decided where to build the jail then started looking at the land use requirements. Now they're having to scramble to adjust the land use plan. Talk about getting the cart before the horse...

    Similarly, they voted to approve a proposal from the Department of Transportation to build a welcome center on county-owned land across from where they are planning to build a jail. Yet, as mention in Part III of this series, they have yet to consult with the School Board to assess whether there is a need for a school in the fastest growing section of the county and what role this site might play in addressing that need.

    And the list goes on and on.

    This chairman has never found the need to look at the capital needs of the county in a systematic, planned manner. It is deal with whatever comes up and worry about tomorrow somewhere down the road. Even when the experts they bring in tell them they need a CIP the chair simply ignored that advice and moved on to the next item on the agenda.

    As Warren Smith pointed out in a comment he posted to the Part III article, the 20-30 million dollars they propose to spend on a jail would go a long way toward providing emergency medical services to the northeastern section of the county. But what about Aurora? Where does providing Paramedic services in that region of the county fit into the long range plan?

    And the lack of sound planning is precisely what led to the loss of the main hospital. The planning process the county followed did not include sufficient oversight for the Board of Commissioners to even know what the financial status of the hospital was before it was "too late to save it." They lost a fifty million asset without knowing what was going on.

    The bottom line is that we have had a dismal failure of leadership on the part of the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners. It has existed for longer than the current chairman has served but the really sad part is that the current chairman has done nothing - absolutely nothing - to correct this deficiency. And for that the people who need emergency health care, the students who need decent schools, the businesses that need a sound economic development policy and even the criminals suffer from this abysmal lack of leadership.

    There is an election coming in November. The problem can be corrected. Ironically, it can in all likelihood be changed by one seat. If the conservatives gain control of that seat, now held by Al Klemm who has voted with the myopic Democrats on over 80% of the significant votes in which the board split, then there is reason to assume that a new majority will elect a conservative chairman.

    We would suggest that this is exactly what this county needs.

    The problem here is not the absence of a CIP or sound planning process or where or whether to build a new jail. Those are symptoms. The problem is one of leadership. And that is what needs to be changed.

    There are literally dozens of article on this site about how much money this Board of Commissioners has wasted over the last decade and the horrible decisions that have been made. And most of those bad decisions can be traced back to the lack of an effective planning process. And that can be traced back to poor leadership. The question is: Will the voters correct this mess?