Stan Deatherage Speaks as a Citizen to the Beaufort County Commissioners on the Southwest County Jail | Eastern NC Now

Stan Deatherage's brief statement to the Beaufort County Commissioners, July 7, 2014.

    I have a deep sympathy for you commissioners for the situation you now find yourselves in. I state sympathy, rather than empathy, because, in my nearly 18 years of being a county commissioner, I have never been in your situation.

    Today, you four county commissioners, the slimmest of a majority, find yourselves in a position of obligating the county for a large sum of debt, without a referendum for a general obligation bond as per the generally accepted practice prescribed by the North Carolina constitution, to build an unpopular capital project in a location that should be reserved for commerce and industry, not an industrialized incarceration complex.

    To say this is a most unpopular project might be an understatement of grand proportions ... not because it is a jail built away from the county seat of Washington, in the southwest corner of the county, but because it is being done without the democratic will of the People, as per the expressed design of the North Carolina Constitution.

    By bypassing the North Carolina Constitution, and denying our county taxpayers their democratic right to vote this project up or down, you sow a seed of profound acrimony among the electorate that will fester as a cancer upon the proper precedent for good governing in this county. At some point, the electorate will either forgive this transgression upon their democratic process, or they will foment an anger that will boil to a point of their awakening that will bode well for this participatory Republic, and quite poorly for you commissioners that now find yourselves in this predicament, whether you realize that predicament or not.

    If you continue upon this path, and with no significant econmic downtown, you will forge upon these citizens a tax increase of 4% within 4 years after the Southwest County Jail's completion. If there is a significant economic downturn the tax increase will be far worse.

    I do not envy your position, and I fully urge you to rethink that position. Changing your position is your point of privilege as representatives of your constituents, some may be in this room now. Accordingly, I respectfully urge you to tact to a position of greater wisdom, and one of better public access to our promised constitutional process.

    Let the folks vote in a referendum. Let their democratic voice be heard.

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