The RINO Network | Eastern North Carolina Now

A few days ago, I wrote an article entitled “Is there Truth in Politics”.  This is a continuation of that thread.  

Frankie Waters called the special meeting of commissioners to consider the request of Sheriff Hammonds and the School Board to hire deputies to provide School Resource Officer services.  Neither the School Board nor the Sheriff can spend public money without the approval of the Board of County Commissioners.  I thought I knew how the majority of the Commissioners would vote about the situation because of their knowledge about the toxic situation in the schools under the Coleman regime.  I got fooled.

The enthusiastic Beaufort County staff prepared financial documents to support what Fake Frankie Waters wanted to do.  There was a question-and-answer period.  There was no discussion about future costs.  There was a discussion about how the sheriff was going to recruit the 12 deputies for the schools.  Sheriff Hammonds insisted, this could be done; even though there have been a minimum of five vacancies in the Sheriff’s Department for at least five years.  Hammonds was asked if he would offer positions to all the present employees of Allied Security. He said he would.   This will be difficult because several Allied Security personnel do not qualify for employment as deputies.

Chairman, Fake Frankie Waters, did an unusual thing.  He allowed every commissioner to ask as many questions as he liked of Sheriff Hammonds.  This is unusual.  Waters usually tries to shut down discussion when he has the votes.  Recently, Commissioner Deatherage and I have given him serious challenges about his dictatorship of Board meetings.  In my opinion allowing more time for debate on this issue is a part of the cover up for this back room deal.

I had eight questions of Sheriff Hammonds. Most had to do with the fact that the schools, by statute, are open only 180 days each year.  What will deputies do during the rest of the year?  Will the proposed Memorandum of Understanding include the guidelines for how deputies interact with school personnel? That is, will they be required to respect the wishes of school management.

Hammonds insists that he can provide 12 new deputies to fill the SRO positions in schools. Hammonds, during his question-and-answer sessions with the School Board and the County Commissioners, never said how he would fill these positions even though he has not been able to fill all these vacant positions to date.  The implication before both boards is these employees will be full-fledged sworn deputies. Deputy hiring in the Sheriff’s Department will be watched closely because, there is not a requirement that School Resource Officers must be sworn deputies.  

This exercise in getting rid of Allied Security has been disappointing because no attention has been paid to future costs or improved services or the relationship between schools and deputies.  We know about the more than $600,000 increase in this year’s budget.  There has been no discussion about future costs. Figures presented to Commissioners during the Spring of 2023 gave me the impression we are talking about an annual increase of about one million dollars.  There are about $700,000 in cars yet to be purchased for the twelve new deputies during the 2024-25 budget year. This is in addition to the $600,000 for salaries.

Had this exercise been conducted entirely in the open with public participation and without the “time is of the essence” factor, all of the benefits and costs could have been examined. There are at least five options. The first is to develop a program using only the grant for school safety given to us by the State.  That is a little less than $400,000.  The second is to keep Allied. Security.  The third is to turn it over to the Sheriff using sworn deputies.  The fourth is to do nothing using resources (and the $400,000) provided by the Center for School Safety which is funded by the State of North Carolina.  The fifth is to develop a volunteer SRO program, using the $400,000 of State money.

It is a shame that a comprehensive study involving the public, was not done. There are a lot of holes in school security.  RINO to RINO in the back room does not produce a good school safety program.

Providing school safety has been another exercise in bad management.  This exercise has been majority driven by RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). The majority of the School Board are Republicans as is the Board of County Commissioners.  These two groups are joined at the hip.

There has been no questioning of the annual school budget during the past five years.  The Board of County Commissioners spends less than 30 minutes approving and considering this approximately 18 million dollar budget.  I am sure there will be disagreement with this small amount of time.  So, I will be charitable and include all of the time the Board of Commissioners spent considering the school budget and in joint meetings with the School Board.  That would be a stretch to get to 10 hours.  If this is the case the Board of Commissioners approved the budget at the rate of 1.8 million dollars per hour.

We have all of the problems in the Beaufort County School System that you may see on national television. These are; gender change, lack of discipline, new math, critical race theory, cursive writing, bullying, high priced socially unacceptable curriculums, huge expenditures for woke programs, on and on it goes.  

Neither the Board of Education or the Board of County Commissioners is willing to address these issues.  Again, the majority of the Board of County Commissioners and the Board of Education are Republicans.  RINOs who spend their time running from the education problems.

The voters have an opportunity to thin or eliminate the RINO herd during the 2024 primary and general elections.  School Board members Carolyn Walker, and Terry Draper have Republican primary opponents in the March 5, 2024 elections.  Another three School Board candidates will be challenged in the general election in November.  The School Board runs in Districts unlike Commissioners.

County Commissioners run at large.  There are five candidates for four seats in the primary elections.  RINOs Randy Walker and John Rebholz need to be replaced with conservatives.  Conservative candidates are:  Tandy Dunn, Steve Carawan and Hood Richardson.

Unless there are major changes in these boards there will be no change in schools or County government.  Beaufort County continues to over tax and spend as well as provide poor management of our low performing schools.  Beaufort County RINOs spent almost ten million dollars in a useless capital fund project for installing the internet in places where few people live during the past two years.  That could have been a huge reduction in taxes.

If you want to change government, change the people who are running government.