Beaufort County Commissioners Overtaxed You | Eastern North Carolina Now

Beaufort County Commissioners Overtaxed You

BY: HOOD RICHARDSON

Is there a difference between a robber holding a gun on you and taking your money and a politician using white collar crime to take your money?  My opinion is there is none. Stan Deatherage and I have told our citizens for years that we are being overtaxed.  Now Tandy Dunn voted to reduce taxes.

A motion was made during the budget work session last week to reduce ad valorem taxes by ten percent this year.  It was quickly voted down by the big spenders.  They are Fake Frankie Waters, Randy Walker, Jerry Langley and Ed Booth, otherwise known as the Gang of Four.  

Beaufort County has a surplus of about 40 million dollars.  We collect about 50 million dollars in property taxes (mostly cars and real estate) each year.  The legislature mandates that our fund balance (something like reserves or savings) not get below 8 percent during the year.  That amount of money is about 7 million dollars.  Because we collect taxes once each year our low point usually comes during August or September. That is because people start paying their taxes during September.

The Gang of Four will try to tell you that we do not know enough about our finances to make a decision to reduce taxes at the beginning of the budget process.  This is not true because of the huge surplus of cash we have on hand.  A third grader can competently make this decision.

They will also try to tell you because this is a revaluation year we are uncertain about how much money we may have.  This is not true.  Actually, the tax rate will go down because it is a revaluation year, but we will collect the same amount of money because the value of property across the county has gone up.

The amount of spending determines what the tax rate will be.  What refusing to reduce taxes says to taxpayers is the Gang of Four does not yet know how much they are going to increase spending.  Spending on the average has increased more than 2.5 million dollars each year during the past four years.  Where did the money come from?  It came from increased sales tax collections, higher values on property sales, increased car prices, and new additions such as new houses and equipment purchases.

At the end of the day there is no excuse for not lowering taxes other than the greed of the Gang of Four.

Having this surplus money is important to the RINOs and Democrats because it allows them to keep funding their friends and start new projects.  The half million dollars of money for the four acres for the new school came out of the fund balance.  The much more than four million dollars that has gone for additional wiring for the internet came from the fund balance.  Money for the county park on Wright’s Creek comes out of the fund balance.  The RINO’s and Democrats like to have money available so they can continue to give more than a million dollars each year to their favorite charities.

Had we not had this surplus we would have had to swap land for the four acres for the new school.  That cost us nothing.  Without the over taxing we would not still be funding Obama era programs like “broadband” which is the gifting of money to telephone companies to build more telephone lines in areas with low populations that cannot pay their way.  A lot of that broadband money went to Fake Frankie Waters’ old telephone company.  Fake Frankie was chairman of the board of Tri County Telephone for enough years that it had to be sold in order to survive.  So, in addition to losing the company, the former owners are giving their tax money to the new owners.  Do we need a county park at Wrights Creek?  Why do we use taxpayers’ money for the Gang of Four’s favorite charities?  

Fake Frankie Waters has been objecting to being called Fake Frankie.  I call him Fake Frankie because he refused to sign a statement that he would support the Republican Party platform when he first ran for commissioner.  All other Republicans signed it that year.  Then as a Republican sitting on the Beaufort County Republican Executive Committee, he donated to at least one Democrat running for Sheriff.  The Beaufort County Republican Party did nothing about his Democrat behavior.  Knowing all of this and seeing how he votes, he looks like a Fake Frankie to me.

The 40 million surplus is dead money, sitting in the County savings account drawing about 3 percent interest.  It is much more valuable to our economy if it is in the hands of the public being spent to benefit Beaufort County families.

There is not a good reason for any government, county, state or federal government to tax people and pile up the money.  The theory of a democracy is that the government taxes only what it needs to survive.  After all, governments can always increase taxes if they need more money.  Taxes are a destroyer of wealth because they are always invested in nonearning assets.

Those who are working and paying taxes are overtaxed already as they pay to fund socialism.  Now these elite RINOs and Democrats are over-taxing you to pay for their personal desires.  Taxpayers should start talking to the Gang of Four (Fake Frankie Waters, Randy Walker, Ed Booth and Jerry Langley) about the money that is being taken from them in the form of taxes that are not necessary to fund basic government.  Thievery is the taking of money or valuables to fund what the thief personally wants.  Tax thievery is no different.  

I have heard the argument that this is just a little bit of money from each person, not enough for them to care.  When you add all those little bits together, it becomes millions that are used to fund the tax thief’s desires.

Excess spending in Washington, D.C. has caused another tax burden on all taxpayers.  It is called inflation.  The bad part about inflation is that it hurts those least able to pay higher prices more than it does those who can afford the higher prices.  The County Commission could help ease this burden by reducing local taxes to a level that is needed for essential services.  Nothing more.  Think about this when you go to vote in the next election.  It will take only one more conservative commissioner to correct this problem.