The Gang of Four Strike Again | Eastern North Carolina Now

The Gang of Four Strike Again

BY: HOOD RICHARDSON

Expensive losses have been delivered to Beaufort County, on several occasions, by collusion among RINOs (Republican In Name Only) and Democrats. The present vote swapping and mutual admiration society commonly known as the Gang of Four (Republican Fake Frankie Waters, Republican Randy Walker, Democrat Ed Booth and Democrat Jerry Langley) delivered another loser for Beaufort County residents during the July Commissioners meeting.

They voted not to allow the subject of zoning of the vacant industrial park located on US Highway 17 South of Chocowinity to be discussed at Commissioners’ meetings for six months. There is a procedural rule that provides for a six-month holiday with a majority vote of commissioners. This rule is usually used to cover up the inappropriate behavior of the majority.

The issue is the almost 250 acres the county purchased in 2008 for economic development does not have a single business located in it. The reason is because of zoning and the reputation of the Town of Chocowinity. When the property was purchased the majority of the Board decided it needed to be zoned.  Stan Deatherage and I voted against zoning. Beaufort County had a special bill introduced in the legislature to allow the Town of Chocowinity to extend its zoning to include the 300 acres. Without the special bill the property would have been covered under Beaufort County zoning. There would have been no zoning because Beaufort County is not zoned.

This decision was made by the then collection of Democrats and RINOs on the Board. Liberals just love zoning in spite of the fact that it rarely works well. Sometimes, with zoning, there comes corruption, favoritism and huge expensive bureaucracies to administer the favoritism and corruption.

After the special bill was passed the Board of County Commissioners went back to sleep and the Town of Chocowinity proceeded to zone the property “light” industrial. About two years ago Stan Deatherage and I began asking why nothing had happened since 2007 at the Chocowinity Industrial Park.

The park has high voltage electricity, natural gas, sewer, water, a federal highway and a railroad track.  What else could anyone want. That is when we discovered the zoning issue. We already knew Chocowinity has a bad reputation for development.

Industries looking for places to expand or relocate usually use State Government sites (Department of Commerce) for their research. State governments list sites much like a real estate business uses Multiple Listing Services (MLS). Companies screen these sites. The killers for our site are: zoned light industrial, a small-town culture, a small town that has all the problems of a small town, and a small town that is not pro development. Prospects do not see this site as County Development. If we get the zoning removed and the property listed as county development, we will have a much better chance of getting industry and better jobs.

We made our fellow commissioners aware of the situation and the Gang of Five (Rebholz was on the board then) promptly started delaying tactics.  The Gang of Four ran out of delaying tactics several months ago, but I have continued to put this item on the agenda for each meeting.

The collusion among Democrats and RINOs did great harm to Beaufort County and our citizens during the past 20 years. This situation is no different. Some of the disasters delivered are: gifting our hospital with no control by Beaufort County resulting in terrible emergency room services; supporting the closing of the Belhaven Hospital resulting in poor medical services in Belhaven and moving the 5,000 annual emergency room visits in Belhaven to the Washington Emergency Room; building the US Highway 17 bypass on the west side of Washington causing Beaufort County to continue to be divided and contributing to the closing of Snowden school: closing Snowden, a neighborhood school with the next similar school located 25 miles away;  allowing overbuilding of schools so that half the seats in county schools are empty; and overtaxing citizens and using the money to build additional new consolidated schools.

Damage to Beaufort County has been severe. The effects of each of these actions are not easily healed. It will take generations, if ever, to recover.