Beaufort County Commissioners: A Week of Budget Talks | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Beaufort County Commissioners met to discuss the county's business, and, for our loyal readers, we are employing these two unvarnished posts of the two separate meetings, in one article here, by the our friends at the Beaufort Observer.

Commissioners begin budget sessions

Monday Night, May 13, 2013
   It's budget time again. Hang on to your checkbook.

    The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners began their budget deliberations Monday night (5-13-13). They meet three or four times on the budget and then hold a public hearing that will, if it is like it has been in the past, not make any real difference. They're set to increase spending. But, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

    The opened the process Monday night by watching a video from the N. C. County Commissioners Association. It contain some interesting information, and we begin our reporting on the budget with that:

 

Al Klemm votes with the Democrats to spend more next year without even looking at options for holding the line on spending

Tuesday Night, May 14, 2013
    The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners were less than thirty minutes into their budget workshop before it was all over. Well, not exactly over in the sense of being finished, but over in the sense that the die is cast. There will be a budget that calls for increased spending.

    The Manager's recommended budget is $54,183,411 for FY 2014. The project total spending this year will be $52,150,079. That compares to $51,031,628 in FY 2012 and $51,513,043 in FY 2011 and $50,495,687 in FY 2010. Looked at another way, what you have is a county government spending over four million dollars more than it did just four years ago. And that is in the worst recession in our lifetimes.

    Click here to download a table with the numbers.

    Here's the drill:

    The County Manager recommended a budget with no tax increase but with nearly two million dollars in additional, new expenditures over this year. That's the infamous "bottom line." If this budget is adopted it will appropriate two million dollars more in spending than this year's spending.

    Now the Manager and Assistant Manager say they will not spend all that much money, but as Robert Belcher said "what you're doing is building in a two million cushion."

    So Hood Richardson made a motion, which was seconded by Stan Deatherage, to send the budget back to the staff to be re-worked to keep appropriated spending at the same level, or less, than this year. The motions failed 3-4, with nominal "Republican" Al Klemm voting with the three Democrats (Langley, Booth and Belcher) and against the other three Republicans on the board (Brinn, Deatherage and Richardson. You can watch the discussion in the video below: