Financial Incompetence, Gang of Four | Eastern NC Now

Financial Incompetence, Gang of Four

BY: HOOD RICHARDSON

I have often thought Bozo the Clown had cloned himself and held many public offices.  Now, I am sure of it.  The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners voted four to three not to have a professional accountant examine the financial statement presented to them by the Big Cheese.  The four votes came from Jerry Langley, Ed Booth, Frankie Waters, and Randy Walker.  Why would any competent official not want to verify the truthfulness of any information presented to him.  Decisions are guaranteed to be bad if made from bad information.

The financial savings in closing the S. W. Snowden School were presented to the Board of County Commissioners.  It shows $1,760,000 savings to the Beaufort County School System if the S. W. Snowden School in Aurora is closed.  The statement submitted by the Big Cheese takes credit for $1,440,000 in teacher salaries.  Teacher salaries are paid by the State Department of Instruction.  There is no County money in state teacher pay.  The money is paid based on the number of students in that school.  When these students are moved to Chocowinity that money is still paid by the state for teachers for those students to be at Chocowinity.  There is no way this money can ever wind up in the Beaufort County School System’s bank account.  The Big Cheese’s claim is false.

This leaves about $330,000 to run the education program in the school.  That is to buy toilet paper, clean the building, pay for electricity, etc.  Claiming the entire $330,000 is a saving is not legitimate either.  Surely those students are going to need toilet paper and some of those other services if they attend the Chocowinity schools.  So where are the savings?  Being charitable there could possibly be $100,000 in savings.

However, there are additional transportation expenses.  Students have to be collected for the S. W. Snowden School, so there is no savings there.  That cost is the same.  The additional transportation cost comes in transporting at least 100 students 25 miles each way every day from Aurora to Chocowinity twice a day.  There are 180 days in the school year.  That is 9,000 miles for one bus and I estimate four buses will be required.  That is 36,000 miles per year. Using the most conservative costs, excluding the North Carolina fuel tax, the most economically the additional transportation can be provided is $140,000 per year.  Therefore, there is not a savings.  There is an expense of $40,000 per year in closing the S. W. Snowden School.

An additional cost is the impact on the two affected schools in Chocowinity.  There has been no information presented about how much student space is available.  The taxpaying public, the students, the parents and the Chocowinity teachers have the right to know how crowded the Chocowinity schools will be.  There is a cost associated with space requirements.  Will modular classrooms have to be brought in?  What about class sizes?  The costs on the Chocowinity campuses could easily be another $200,000.

There are no savings in closing the S. W. Snowden School.  There is only expense.  The benefits go to Fake Frankie Waters who is willing to put your children on buses before 6:00 AM and return them after 5:00 PM.  The Big Cheese gets to improve his resume by saying he has built schools and closed schools.  My opinion is that he is looking at his next big job, not the welfare of Beaufort County or our children.  There is the damage to the Aurora Community, the families and the children.  What price is this?

I believe the plan of the Big Cheese and Fake Frankie Waters is to overcrowd the Chocowinity schools, use this as a reason to justify a consolidated school south of Chocowinity to serve the two schools in Chocowinity and S. W. Snowden.  Fake Frankie Waters let the cat out of the bag in the newspaper article when he made that proposal a few weeks ago.  Fake Frankie and the Big Cheese secretly (without the knowledge of the Board of County Commissioners and the School Board) negotiated for two years to get the 42 million dollars to build the “consolidated grammar school” on the Eastern Elementary Campus.  The Cheese and the Fake are doing the same thing to build another “factory” (consolidated) school.

I, as both a Commissioner and citizen of Beaufort County, am concerned and alarmed that the fraudulent amount of savings was presented as gospel in the Manager’s Budget Report to the Commissioners.  This County Board of Commissioners has allowed various financial situations to go unchallenged that have sent messages of either incompetence on our part, or ignorance of our lack of ethical responsibility, or reckless abandonment of our fiduciary responsibility over the years.  Signals of apathy have, in my opinion, contributed to two Volunteer Fire Departments being investigated and the Chocowinity fraud trials now under way.

The claim of the 1.76 million dollars in savings for closing the S. W. Snowden School ranks with the scandals of Bernie Madoff.  There are laws that have to do with producing fraudulent financial documents.  There are people who commit fraud every day and get away with it. How successful these people are depends on how competent and strong those who are losing their money are.  Commissioners are elected to protect the public’s money.

Every person in Beaufort County should be concerned about this situation.  As a taxpayer you are going to pay for all these mistakes.  As a grandparent I am concerned the quality of education is going to go downhill even faster.  Future generations will be either uneducated or brain washed.  As a parent, your children are going to suffer long hours on buses, and you will have virtually no access to what your children are being taught.

Attend the meeting at Southside High School on May 29 at 5:30 PM, sign up to speak and let the Board of Education know their lack of oversight is well known to you.  I believe this meeting is to tell you the S. W. Snowden School has been closed.

It may be of more importance to attend the Board of Education meeting at 5:30 PM on Tuesday May 27 at 845 North Pierce Street.  All of the Statutory Requirements have been met for the Board to vote to close S. W. Snowden.  They can vote to close the school on Tuesday May 27.  I suspect that is what will happen because these kinds of actions are better taken at “regular” meetings as opposed to “special meetings” and this timing fits the school budget hearings with the Board of County Commissioners.

Decision makers:

Eltha Booth 252-946-3325  ebooth@beaufort.k12.nc.us

T. W. Allen 252-943-1483  tallen@beaufort.k12.nc.us

Terry Williams 252-943-8547 twilliam@beaufort.k12.nc.us

Gary Carlton 252-721-4888 gcarlton@beaufort.k12.nc.us

Carolyn Walker 252-975-3453 cwalker@beaufort.k2.nc.us

Donald Shreve 252-725-1131 dshreve@beaufort.k12.nc.us

Daniel Hudson 252-945-8454 dhudson@beaufort.k12.nc.us