Does Beaufort County Government Manage Your Tax Money? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Our elected officials have a duty to manage our money effectively and efficiently. The majority of the Beaufort County Commissioners are clueless about how to manage money, determine best value or best financing methods. That could come down to whether to raise taxes or borrow money.

    Our present board announced several times during the past few years that they did not intend to micro manage anything, they were going to use consultants and the staff to run Beaufort County. That has not worked very well. Since then taxes have gone up each year. And, a lot of really bad decisions have been made. If commissioners are not going to manage the public's money, why do we need them? The Board of Commissioners could hand the check book to the staff and meet once each year to raise taxes.

    The present board does not understand the concept of "return on investment". They borrowed 4.7 million dollars and have reduced the payroll by only three jobs. The staff told the Board of Commissioners there are a lot of other savings that could not be measured. Six Commissioners believed staff and approved the 4.7 million dollar expense. Where I am from, if you cannot measure it, it does not exist. The liberals on the Board voted to borrow the money, knowing they were raising the cost of water.

    Another recent example in handling money was to take a 59 thousand dollar one time budgeted expense for body cameras and make it into a a five year payment of $59,000 each year. In addition to increasing the budget by $59,000 for another four years they allowed the vendor to sell the contract so that we guarantee to pay the money each year to a lender in New York. The vendor immediately gets paid the full price less the financing costs. This deal was pitched to the Commissioners as a lease that we could walk away fm anytime we want to. This kind of scrambled thinking is expensive to the tax payers.

    Consumer financing practices are terrible from all viewpoints. These clowns locked themselves into a consumer financing deal with zero protection for the County if anything goes wrong, like the supplier going out of business, filing bankruptcy or providing inferior goods. None of the promises made by the Sheriff's Department are in writing. Just the cold hard writing in a bank loan. Frankie Waters, Jerry Langley, Ed Booth, Jerry Evans and John Rebholz never realized they have been had.

    This deal is no different than high risk consumer financing. That is, one goes to a finance company, borrows the money for a new living room sofa, gives the money to the furniture man and the sofa catches fire next week. The borrower still owes the finance company for the sofa. This is the dumbest and most expensive way for any government to make any purchase.

    Then there are continuation budgets. They are real simple and lazy people love them. Just take this year's budget and add your new purchases to it. This is why taxes have gone up since the liberal Republicans took control of the Board. Do you run your household or business this way?

    There are many other examples just as bad as these.

    The 2020 elections offers a chance to drain the Beaufort County Swamp. Four seats are up for election and four seats are a majority. Conservative Republican Stan Deatherage does not have to run this time. So, we need to elect three conservative Republicans. I am one of the three conservatives. Now we only need to elect two conservative Republicans. John Rebholz, has already said he is a "Buzzeo Republican". Buzzeo was an ultra liberal. Then there is liberal Republican, Jerry Evans. We need to find two conservative Republicans to replace Rebholz and Evans.

    Drain the Swamp. If you do not like the way government is run, then replace the people who are running government.