Are We Still in Kansas? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    I confess, as a Beaufort County Commissioner, I sometimes wonder what is really going on. I got that feeling as I was preparing for the January Commissioners meeting. An item was on the agenda that seemed to have no purpose. Even more puzzling was the cast of characters. Five of the 16 dubbed with the title of " Leader" are county employees ranking as department heads or better. Even more suspicious, they were not asking for money.

    My curiosity is always aroused when these conditions are present at a Commissioners meeting.

    The group is a new corporation called "Beaufort County 360". According to he Secretary of State Beaufort County 360 was incorporated on August 1 of 2016 as a non profit whose purpose is to make charitable and educational distributions to other non profits in order to improve the quality of life for all citizens of Beaufort County. All of this sounds good but does not tell us what they do.

    Turns out this is the same group created by a Federal grant program generally called "Race to the Top Transformation Zone". The funding ended around July of 2016. The original group consisted of four counties, Beaufort, Hyde, Bertie and Chowan. A part of their focus was early childhood education "through a process of improved cross-sector system collaboration to positively impact children and their families" (their words not mine). Translation, social engineering. One of their services was to pre school children. Study after study has shown that one cannot distinguish between children who have been through the "More at Four" and other social engineering programs after the third grade from those who did not go through the programs. For example, the group is also interested in healthy eating.

    Beaufort County 360 is presently funded by Vidant. Here is what they get out of it. All of the health care services such as healthy eating, and diabetic services ,etc go to helping Vidant improve their problems with patients returning in less than 30 days after being discharged. This is a big deal with Medicare and Medicaid. Vidant has already been disciplined for too many patients returning for re admission within 30 days of leaving the hospital.

    The mantra of all these groups is basically the same. That is some fancy language that is non specific and all encompassing that can mean whatever is needed on any given day. To give you an example. I quote from their presentation: "The development of a county-wide strategic plan that: increased collaboration among cross-sector community leaders and invested residents, considering the voices of the community members to drive plan creation" What does that mean? It is deliberately not understandable. They further state their collective vision is for our residents to be healthy, our children to be ready for school and our residents to be economically secure. There are several pages in their presentation about promoting healthy eating habits and strengthening families. More Obama social engineering.

    Consider that the Health Director, the Social Services Director, the County Planning Director, and the County Manager are members of Beaufort County 360. The remaining eleven members are either funded by grants, reciepients of grant benefits or consultants or are otherwise indirectly paid from Beaufort County, State of Federal tax funds.

    This is a group of left over Obama social engineering experimenters whose purpose is to bridge the gap between the wild social experiments carried out by the Obama White House and the incoming conservative Trump administration. Their purpose is to keep the failed social experiments of the Obama administration alive by collaborating to use County funds and grants to continue what Obama started. This is another grant mill.

    Looking at this through my eyes as a county commissioner we already have a Social Services

    Department, a Health Department, a Planning Department and a County Manager. All of these people are supposed to be aware of the things described above. Why do we need these employees to lobby the commissioners and the public for more handouts. From and ethics and conflict of interest viewpoint, can any one of these people honestly do the bidding of the Board of Commissioners and represent the tax paying citizens of this County while being a member of a group whose purpose is to expand the size and expense of government. It is a certainty that this commissioner does not support more government, social engineering. more grants and expense.

    None of these "Leaders" has asked the Board of Commissioners for permission to join this group. Because there is such a conflict between their employment duties and the goals of Beaufort County 360, permission is required in my opinion.

    More social engineering means more expense which means increased taxes, whether county, state or federal.

    These groups all operate the same way. They innocently show up, talking good deeds. They come back later during the budget process reminding us that we have some how approved their existence and purpose for being, and ask for a hand out. They usually have several liberal (both Democrat and Republican) commissioners who support their cause.

    There is no doubt that they do have some legitimate causes. However, I have a duty to protect the tax payers from the misuse of their money whether it is used for social engineering or vote buying. The present board of commissioners does donate taxpayer money to individual commissioners favorite charities. In return they get a few votes, bought with tax money.

    I challenged the Beaufort County 360 group because of serious ethical conflicts when county employees, lobby for county funds for social experiments. Or when department heads are lobbying for any programs other than those approved by the Commissioners.

    The Beaufort County budget preparation begins in January of each year. We will probably see several similar groups make presentations at Commissioner meeting between now and June. The more innocent these presentations sound the more guilty they are. Here is how it works. Those who want money from the taxpayers will lobby 3 or 4 commissioners who promise support. These are almost always the Democrats and RINOs who are afraid to say "NO" because they may loose a vote. The group then makes an innocent appearance before the commissioners telling us how their project will benefit mankind. The manager slips their request into the budget. Notice that there is no cost benefit analysis. Commissioners do not require reports on how the money is used. The money is co-mingled with the groups other funds, if any.

    This process will continue until we stop doing continuation budgets by electing conservative commissioners. Conservative commissioners believe in smaller government, less regulation and more personal responsibility.