Chatham Commission Gets Back to Basics | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: The author of this fine report is Kristy Bailey, who is a contributor to the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

'Sustainability' and 'human relations' jobs give way to funding schools and public safety

    PITTSBORO     The 2010 election saw a major turnaround in the makeup of the Chatham County Board of Commissioners. In a county where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1, Republicans ousted three Democratic incumbents on the five-member board with promises to save taxpayers $2 million over four years.

    Among their first official acts, Republicans Brian Bock, Pam Stewart, and Walter Petty eliminated two high-profile positions that the new members of the board considered make-work jobs -- director of sustainable communities and executive director of the county's human relations commission -- for which the duties seemed nebulous at best.

    That move has not been without some inevitable handwringing, but the new majority says its focus has been to restore funding to the core functions of government, such as public safety and education, while eliminating programs unrelated to those goals.

    The first cut: Chatham County's Sustainable Communities director, Cynthia Van der Wiele, who had been on the job since June 2009. Van Der Wiele's pedigree included two master's degrees from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, and a bachelor's, master's, and doctorate from North Carolina State. She had worked previously as an environmental specialist in the N.C. Division of Water Quality's wetlands unit and as a storm water engineer.

    Democratic commissioner George Lucier, unseated by Bock after a single term, had argued at the board's December 2008 work session to create the position, saying it was important in terms of promoting green building, transportation, and affordable housing.

    Van der Weile's duties included coordinating county units such as planning, environmental resources, soil and erosion sedimentation control, central permitting, transportation, green building, and affordable housing.

    "I didn't have a good handle on what her job was," Bock told Carolina Journal.

    Positions for sustainable community directors were, at least in 2008 when Chatham County commissioners began formulating the job description, relatively few. Democratic commissioner Sally Kost told the board in December 2008 that she knew of one county in the Pacific Northwest that had a similar position, according to minutes from the board's Dec. 15 meeting.

    "We said from the beginning that our goal was to reduce and prioritize," said Bock. "We expected that some areas would see expansion in spending while others would see reductions. Our process would be to fund those items that are a 'core' function of government and reduce those expenditures that were not."

    In 2011, discretionary funding comprised 28.9 percent, of the county's general fund. Total expenditures for the sustainable communities division Van der Weile headed -- which included permitting, administrative, and other assorted departments -- topped $2.3 million, with more than half that amount going to salaries alone, according the 2010-11 county budget.

    Chatham County's 2010 combined local tax burden ranked 24th in the state, the John Locke Foundation's 2012 By the Numbers report on local government finance noted. The county ranks 45th by population in North Carolina, based on provisional 2011 data from the state Office of Budget and Management.

    Also dismissed last January was Esther Coleman, executive director of the Chatham County Human Relations Commission since 2007.

    In response to the dismissal, all eight of the county's volunteer human relations commission resigned last July. "We refuse to participate in an ineffectual commission and perpetuate the myth that this board cares about the welfare of minorities," the group's former chairman, Norman Clark, told commissioners, adding that the commission did not have the resources or abilities to address discrimination complaints from local residents.

    Coleman was hired to promote non-discrimination practices throughout Chatham County. More specifically, her job was to "avert and pre-empt issues by dealing with discrimination, labor violations, hate bias, and hate crimes before they become problems and expensive lawsuits for the county," Pittsboro activist Loyse Hurley explained last January to Chatham County commissioners as she protested the dismissal.

    At a commission meeting last January, one Pittsboro resident bristled at the notion of creating the job in the first place. "They had a Community Relations Department to disseminate information to the community," Heather Johnson said. "Why create a special department to target subsets of their community for special attention? Claiming that certain racial minorities or immigrant groups had special needs was insulting to the many people within the community who succeeded without special attention."

    The county created the Human Relations Commission in 2000 to deal with growing population diversity. Chatham was one of 13 local entities to employ a full-time paid staff member to address human relations issues. The county is majority white, but Hispanics and blacks make up about 13 percent of Chatham's population, respectively.

The total costs, including benefits, of the Sustainable Communities director position were approximately $160,000 to the county, and the human relations position, $100,000, according to Bock.

    The commissioners didn't stop there. They also eliminated positions for an obesity prevention coordinator and a public transportation director, both vacant at the time. Bock reasoned that they would have been filled had the incumbents won re-election in 2010.

    "In my opinion, these positions were either poorly defined or not necessary in a rural county such as ours," said Bock. Chatham commissioners voted 3-2, along party lines, to cut the positions, with commissioners Mike Cross and Kost opposing.

    As a result, Bock said, Chatham's discretionary spending fell by 15 percent in the new majority's first year, freeing additional funding for education and public safety. In all, 14 positions, both full- and part-time, were eliminated. At just under $83 million, the fiscal year 2011-12 budget came in roughly $1.5 million below the previous year's budget.

    That said, the 2012-13 budget increased spending by roughly $4 million. Bock said those increases covered raises to county staff, teacher supplements, and a transer to the county's debt reserve for a new jail that's in the works. Also, he said, county education spending went up to offset reductions from the General Assembly.

    Even so, the board's conservative faction in June held the county's tax rate steady at 62.19 cents.

    Ultimately, Bock said, controlling spending won't be enough. County policies will have to encourage business development and economic growth.

    "In that light, we have worked very hard to streamline our permitting process, restructure our [Economic Development Commission], and change the attitude of our employees to be business-friendly," said Bock. "I believe these changes are working as we have had good success in attracting new business and creating new jobs. We have lots of work still to do, but we will stay focused. We may at some point need to raise our property tax rate, but it will be a last resort rather than the first."

    Kristy Bailey is a contributor to Carolina Journal.