All Beaufort County Commissioners Should Represent the Taxpayers | Eastern North Carolina Now

Once Again, We are at Odds with the Beaufort County Board of Education

    Dear reader, before you continue this opinion piece, please read the article, "Beaufort County Board of County Commissioners Meet with their Attorney in Closed Session." If you have read this article, please continue. If you have not read the article ... well, you can continue on as well: I may just have something that you can chew on as well.

    After digesting Attorney Yarborough's comments to the local press, is there any wonder as to whom the county commissioners represent? As one of the office holders that operates as the taxing authority in Beaufort County, I take this position very seriously. In regards to the commissioners' current, and very rare, unanimity on our direction as to being sued by a junior, non-taxing body of government, I hope it sends this strong message to this, and future Boards of Education: We "do not go gentle into that good night." Good politicians must remember who they represent, and for this moment in time, my fellow commissioners remember that they represent the folks that pay the freight in this county - the taxpayers. I pray that, if the proverbial "fur should fly" here in the near future, they do not relapse into the amnesia that I, on occasion, have seen them suffer.

    Regarding the aforementioned unanimity, it has been the correct position of our recent unanimous board of county commissioners to have this primary directive: If they elect to sue the county commissioners, and therefore, the taxpayers for large sums of money to cover-up their recent, and thus continued, excruciatingly poor management decisions, we are going to make it as painful as possible for them to win their case, and therefore collect their ill begotten money.

    To that end, we have been successful. Some of you may question that wisdom, believing that we (county commissioners) should not be sending that money out of Beaufort County in the pockets of overpaid attorneys and relent to the junior governing board. To some extent, I may agree, however, it is my broader view that I cannot permit the Beaufort County taxpayer to be pushed into a corner, and then to be robbed of their hard earned tax dollars. On a professional level, my principles, in governing Beaufort County, will not permit me to walk that shallow path, and make peace with those, who would have us (the taxing authority) extract too much money from the taxpayer, rather than them manage well what money they are given to use, with a measure of insight for its profound purpose.

    And that purpose is educating the young, often nimble, minds, by providing a clean, safe and challenging environment from which they can learn. This is paramount in the proper education of our children, and yet educators seem to have forgotten these basic tenets. I do not wish to cast aspirations toward our Board of Education, because I sincerely believe many of them want a better educational environment for our children; however collectively, they just are not creative and purposeful enough to push forward through the professional stagnation of a state run education system that is still rotting from years of misplaced politics and ambivalence toward education.

    A prime case in point is the North Carolina Association of School Boards, a union with only one directive: To take the money from one hand, and use it to extract money from another - that would be you - the taxpayer. Otherwise, why would they be poking their long nose into the affairs of us, way down east here in Beaufort County? They could care less about the education of our children; they just want our money, so they can continue their feasting from the rotting corpse of North Carolina’s public education system, and I tell you truly, with the sorry politicians that continue to be elected to Raleigh, they, and others like them (liberal unions and other appointed boards), will continue to be enabled to complete the destruction of our public education system.

    In every public problem, there is a political solution, but it our malaise here downeast, where we continusously elect the wrong people to represent us to centers of government, we have not the majority of the electorate have not learned from their msitakes. Now considering this maxim, you might should gird your collective loins, because, I'm going to give it to you straight.

    Every time some mealy-mouthed wheeler / dealer, who pathetically espouses that he is a true conservative or moderate (whichever suits him at that juncture in his life), and requests that you financially support his pathetic candidate, because “he’ll bring the bacon back home,” and you help him: Well, you’re just part of the problem. Maybe you should gut check your principles, and make a determination if you really care about your community, or possibly, you are one of the ones, who believe that good governing is your rightful place to sally up to the trough, and take your big bite … of your community. That is what happens every time you help elect a gutless, stupid, and who-the-hell-cares-whether-he-is-also-dishonest-at-this-point politician to serve us in Raleigh, or in Washington, DC.

    These are serious times that we live in, and every day we are led down this sorry road toward abject apathy, we move ever closer to our nation's eminent demise. If you have principles, please bring them to the fore and help us make a difference.

    If you feel that comments are hyperbolic, and it is in your best interest to keep them (principles) hidden from plain sight, or worse - you never had any to begin with … I will pray for your soul, but in the here and now, I do implore that you stay out of my way. Just stay in the shadows. It would be best, for I see the battle at hand, and I will seek the highest ground for the good fight.