Beaufort County Government’s Bad Budget Decisions | Eastern NC Now

Beaufort County Government’s Bad Budget Decisions

BY:  HOOD RICHARDSON

If governments had to operate with the same standards as industry the world would be a different place. Industry in fact has limited funds. The truth is governments, all of them from the dog catcher to the President, have unlimited funds. Yet governments proffer every day that they have limited funds. Industries have what money they can produce from sales plus whatever they can convince lenders they can pay back. Governments have whatever they levy for taxes plus whatever they can print or borrow. There is no lender sitting across the table from any government saying, “We will not make this loan because we have examined your books and we do not believe you can pay it back with interest.”

I have pointed out in a previous article that elected officials in Beaufort County, and many other places only have the ability and desire to maintain whatever system is in place when they were elected. They rarely use their elected position to solve problems. Illegal drugs eat up from one third to one half of the money in county government. Yet, our policy today is to give drug users free needles and counseling. We occasionally arrest a drug dealer, give him a slap on the hand and send him back to his drug business.

Beaufort County Government continues to make risky financial decisions. The 52-million-dollar new primary school is about two thirds complete. Every school we have built has run over the budgeted cost because of bad management. A 2.5-million-dollar contingency reserve was built into the estimated cost to build the school in order to ensure the project would not go over budget. Some officials implied during the past few months that they anticipated that money would be returned to Beaufort County. This statement was made out of ignorance and inexperience. A contingency is necessary for a big project like this because there are a lot of moving parts. No one knows what the actual cost would be for sure until about three months after the building is in use. It takes that long for all of the billing to be made and presented.

Along comes the School Superintendent, during the May 11 meeting, with some pretty pictures of playground equipment and asks the Board of County Commissioners to release $614,793 of the contingency because they were sure they would not need the contingency. None of the people who are so sure about this have ever built a school or anything of this magnitude. The commissioners have no way of auditing what the Schools are spending or whether or not they are on budget. It is impossible for anyone to know what the final cost of this building will be.

Any prudent manager of any money would have said the contingency is there to finish up this building in case there are some unknown or unanticipated expenses that could appear at the end of the project. This is one of the worst business decisions I have ever seen made. When the project is complete there will be plenty of time to buy playground equipment if there is any money remaining in the contingency.

Here is how this has always played out. When the project is over the Beaufort County School Board will announce that these additional expenses have suddenly appeared, and no human could ever have anticipated them. They will plead innocence. The real situation is they are stupid and inexperienced. The commissioners have always taken the money out of the fund balance and paid for this kind of incompetence. In this case the commissioners backed up by the Beaufort County Staff have clearly shown their inexperience and incompetence.

The School Superintendent also asked to drain $32,880 dollars from a lottery funds account. Both of these actions are red flags to me. The school could be having trouble with making ends meet. Another red flag was the sudden departure of a superintendent in the middle of his pet project, building a new school.

The County Manager made an interesting pitch defending the secret raising of taxes on every taxpayer in Beaufort County last year. His defense is that he was just following the law. He says he did nothing wrong. The Gang of Four (Fake Frankie Waters, Rank Randy Walker and Democrats Booth and Langley) are yet to say they did not know taxes were secretly being raised.

My position has not changed. The Manager and the Gang of Four have an ethical obligation to let the entire Board of Commissioners and the public know they propose raising taxes. They want you to believe they were required by law to use the revenue neutral number as calculated by the requirements of the general statute. That is not so. The law says they have to calculate it according to the statute. There is nothing in the law that requires the calculated tax rate to be levied. There is a lot of law that says withholding information is illegal.

If the Manager and the Gang of Four made an honest mistake they would have already voted to give the money back by reducing taxes.

I forced a vote on the reappointment of Dr. Laura Staton to the Board of the Community College. Her appointment was in the consent agenda. The Community College actively supports and advertises an LGBTQ+ Club. It is up to the Board of Directors to maintain high moral and ethical standards. I am not aware she has taken a stand on this issue. Public places are not the place to promote this kind of behavior.

There is a County owned boat landing on Durham Creek. It was donated many years ago. The presentation from staff was that it is in such bad shape we need to get rid of it. The vote was to sell it. I have been made aware by local residents that there are users, and the County has not been keeping it up. I now believe we should bring it up to standard or find a reasonable alternative so those who use it are not disenfranchised.

I was surprised to learn that there are school administrators and members of the Board of County Commissioners who do not know the significance of May Day celebrations across the world. Randy Walker indicated that he did not know May Day is a communist holiday. It looks like the school system gave this as a holiday so teachers could participate in communist celebrations in Raleigh. What do they teach in history classes?

Commissioner Stan Deatherage raised the issue of limited voting in Beaufort County. His motion was quickly voted down by the Gang of Four. The vote was 4 to 3.