Beaufort County Growth, Is it Good? | Eastern North Carolina Now

Beaufort County Growth, Is it Good?

BY: HOOD RICHARDSON

We know about the growth of spending and mismanagement within the Federal Government. The 37 trillion dollars of debt and the continuation of social subsidy programs seems to have no end. However, I am hopeful the Big Beautiful Bill that Trump just signed will have at least slowed spending and debt down. We are beginning to see some of the gravy train groups begin to complain that they may “starve to death”.

We have the same kind of spending, government growth, handouts, and over taxation problems here in Beaufort County as the Federal Government. Beaufort County government is spending every dime of income it can get its hands on. There is no effort to reduce costs. The Gang of Four (Frankie Waters, Ed Booth, Randy Walker and Jerry Langley) are sitting on a surplus of 27 million dollars but refuse to reduce taxes.

Beaufort County during the past two years has spent 10.5 million for the new consolidated Eastern/Tayloe school, 4 million for telephone companies, and one half million for school land for a total of 15 million dollars. That is off the books’ money, that is, it does not show up in the budget. All of this money came from over taxing the property owners of Beaufort County. County government continues to grow.

At the July Commissioners’ meeting we voted to purchase 3 acres of land for the Community College for $150,000. Supposedly this was for the trades’ curriculum (plumbing, carpentry, brick laying, electricians) school. We did this with the President of the College, Dr. Loope, admitting that there are two other locations on the campus that he could have built the trades school. He admitted that he just wanted the land for future growth. The Community College is plenty big for a county our size. The Gang of Four voted to take the money out of savings and buy unneeded land.

The commissioners approved a grant addition of $68,324.00 for a Housing Mitigation Grant Program to raise houses for people who may have never paid flood insurance. This program has been going on for over 20 years. Most houses have been raised above flood levels. There are some pretty expensive houses being raised at no cost to the owner. What about those of us who buy flood insurance and then have to pay additional to have the house raised. Is this fair and necessary? More borrowed Federal tax money at work. This money was hidden in the consent agenda. I pulled it out and forced a vote. It passed anyway.

Then we took in a grant from the State of North Carolina for $155,398.00 for the Essential Single Family Rehabilitation Loan Pool. Sounds like a loan pool but it is not. If you continue to live in the house the government will forgive the entire amount of the so-called loan. This is for people whose house is rotting down because they never did any maintenance. This money was hidden in the consent agenda. I pulled it out and forced a vote. It passed anyway.

There was another grant for $3,000.00 to Soil and Water Conservation for the money to provide legal and surveying expenses for a Conservation grant that exceeds $100,000.00 for someone to get paid to let their land not be used for some number of years. This is another give away of taxpayer money. We get nothing for this expense.

Then came another grant from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund Decentralized Wastewater System Pilot Program for $250,000.00 to repair septic tank systems. This is for people who make less than $69,904.00 per year. What about those who have been sued by Beaufort County and forced to repair their septic tank system at their own expense?

Then an infrastructure and construction assessment pre-disaster contract was approved. This is a single bid contract supposedly to redesign Beaufort County in the event of a disaster, like a hurricane or perhaps even a tidal wave. The company from Texas provides engineers for $394.00 per hour. This is another of those pipe dreams that give County employees jobs to supervise the engineer. The entire idea is useless for Beaufort County. We have plenty of engineers here. I have some knowledge of this and how it works. County employees and Texas engineers must know more than me. This scheme came from EMS. They are looking after you.

Then we gave a contract for $2,700 per year for mass notification. Another useless contract from EMS because we have television and radio service in Beaufort County.

Then we took $117,086.46 from lottery funds to install new PA systems in Northside, Washington High and Chocowinity schools. It is bad financial judgment to spend this money before the consolidated Eastern and Tayloe schools are much closer to completion, because we do not know what the over runs will be. We may need this money to cover those expenses.

It was not a pleasant commissioners’ meeting for me. The money spigot is fully open. The Gang of Four (Waters, Langley, Booth and Walker) are spending money like it is water. Remember what happened to Tri-County Telephone with Frankie Waters as Chairman. It is no more. Frankie spent their money.

We need a conservative Board of Commissioners with tax and spending reductions.