Comments by Concerned Taxpayer | Eastern NC Now

Washington has a brazen liar for a city manager, who wantonly lied to the citizens when he claimed that the city had not imposed a tax increase this year. In truth, the manager's budget, adopted by a rubber stamp city council, gave city taxpayers a whopping 28% tax increase.

In revaluation years like this one, state law calculates a "revenue neutral" rate, one that would produce the same amount of revenue as the old tax rate based on the increased value of property. Any tax rate above that revenue neutral rate is, by state law as well as by the reality of what taxpayers have to pay, a tax increase.

The county adopted the revenue neutral rate for this year's taxes based on the rate calculated by state law. The City of Washington adopted a rate 28% above the revenue neutral rate. That is a massive tax increase.

Washington's city government is in a sad state of affairs. Not only does the city manager exercise way too much power for a bureaucrat, but the city council is a patheric joke. They are nothing but rubber stamps for Mayor Sadler, nothing but weak "yes men". Between the manager and the mayor, Washington has a Tammany Hall style government.

But the city manager had better watch out. Sadler would love to get rid of him so he can hire the city's first black city manager. With Sadler, it is as much about race as it is about power.

Commented: Sunday, August 3rd, 2025 @ 8:35 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

NC has too many RINOs a/k/a "Undocumented Democrats" who pander to the solar and wind grifters. Berger is just one of them. Thom Tillis is another, as is Tillis' protege Michael Whatley. Whatley's lobbying / public relations firm pushed this solar boondoggle. These people are as big of enemies of the North Carolina consumer as the Democrats are.

Commented: Thursday, July 31st, 2025 @ 10:21 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

The LaCivita connection explains a lot. One wonders if he is tied up in the Green New Deal boondoggle like Tillis and Whatley are. I guess NEVER TILLIS has now become NEVER WHATLEY. Whatley is just a warmed over Tillis. Will we ever learn?

Commented: Saturday, July 26th, 2025 @ 10:37 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

It is hard to imagine that the Raleigh-based out of town school board attorney or the local superintendent were not aware that elections were partisan. Were they playing stall ball here to try to gain control of this seat? This is an 8 to 1 Republican board. Isn't having a school board attorney who is chairman of the Durham County DEMOCRATIC Party a conflict of interest? Wouldn't that be a likely motive for him failing to act on this matter for years?

This near-fiasco reeks of political hanky-panky.

Commented: Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025 @ 1:32 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

There is a term for those who want "to share in the prosperity of America" with lawbreakers who are illegally in our country. That term is SOCIALIST.

The influx of illegal aliens has contributed a lot to depressing the wages of our own citizens and driving up the housing costs of our own citizens. That has happened in all western countries where the illegal alien moochers have flooded in.

Any honest foreigner would apply to legally immigrate, not sneak across our border. Those Biden let in have included foreigners on the terrorist watch list and also members of multiple violent criminal gangs like MS13 and Tren de Aragua. A rise in illegal immigration in any western country is quickly followed by a rise in crime.

Read the polls, Bill Lee. Americans do not want these moochers in our country.

Commented: Tuesday, July 15th, 2025 @ 1:50 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

We need more cuts to federal spending, but the tariffs are working great and with no inflation.

Commented: Saturday, July 12th, 2025 @ 2:56 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

So Cliff Williams wants to take the lemons given him and Aurora by a rotten school board and make lemonaide out of them by opening a charter school. GOOD FOR HIM. I hope he succeeds in that effort. Beaufort County Schools would then be the loser in their plot against Aurora, because all that state education money would flow to the charter school instead of Beaufort County Schools.

Commented: Friday, July 11th, 2025 @ 10:09 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

Cheeseman is building his Washington mega-school with excess capacity. One wonders what his game plan is, and Bath elementary may well be on his target list. I wish we had fewer useful idiots on our school board. Blindly following the bureaucracy makes a really poor excuse for an elected official.

Commented: Wednesday, July 9th, 2025 @ 6:05 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Befuddled, you have a very good point. That boondoggle over the land ownership clearly illustrates the poor management we have in our county schools, and that poor management was just rewarded, from what I'm told, by a big raise and an extension of his contract. I also wonder where the School Board attorney was in all this. Since he he way off in Durham, I suspect they didn't even bother to bring him in on it. Was Cheeseman playing both attorney and real estate appraiser in this farce, neither of which he is qualified or licensed for?

Our school system reminds me of that scene toward the end of the Wizard of Oz, only this time when the dog Toto rips away the curtain, it is Cheeseman in the booth operating the controls of the great and powerful school board.

Commented: Saturday, July 5th, 2025 @ 4:18 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

This law will also help reduce housing costs for American citizens. As usual, the lefties run to the radical judges to try to screw things up.

Commented: Thursday, July 3rd, 2025 @ 2:52 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

What swampy Republican senators did or allowed to happen to the Big Beautiful Bill in the Senate is disgusting, and we need to replace all of them we can in the primaries, because we also need to replace the new McConnell, John Thune. It was the swampy Republicans themselves who were responsible for some ot the watered down items like cutting only half of Biden's spendthrift Green New Deal instead of all of it, like the House did. On other things like letting illegal aliens still get Medicaid, it was a matter of Thune refusing to overrule the Democrat Senate Parliamentarian who had been hired by Harry Reid. Why in the heck did we even have a Harry Reid holdover sitting in that position to screw with this bill? Too many "Republican" senators are really Democrats in Drag. Getting rid of that sellout Tillis is a good start, and so will be taking down Cornyn, Cassidy, and Graham, but there are more that need their walking papers. That idiot James Lankford who tried to do Biden's bidding on open borders comes up agains in 2028. He badly needs to go. All of these sellouts helped Obama and Biden get some of their key legislation through.

Commented: Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 @ 7:47 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

This is the best political news I have heard in a long time. No more Thom Tillis! Tillis has been a major promoter of the wind and solar boondoggle for decades.

Commented: Monday, June 30th, 2025 @ 5:13 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

"Fourth Reich" sounds about right for the way these globalists are behaving in Germany. Globalism is to the 21st century what fascism was to the 20th and communism to the 19th and 20th.

Commented: Saturday, June 28th, 2025 @ 7:32 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

The partisan abuse of power by this Harry Reid holdover Senate parliamentarian just keeps getting worse and more blatantly partisan. This is the same woman who let Democrats stuff a "reconciliation" bill under Biden dubbed the "Inflation Reduction Act" with all sorts of highly ideological climate alarmist boondoggles and pork.

There is problem not time to remove her but she can be overruled by the Senate. Cowardly useless wimp John Thune refuses to do that. As soon as possible this despicable partisan witch needs a pink slip but wimp Thune will probably not do that either. He is just as utterly useless as Mitch McConnell.

www.washingtonexaminer.com

Commented: Friday, June 27th, 2025 @ 9:58 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

You identified the problem. None of this is communicated to the public to allow them to respond until after the fact. We used to have a daily newspaper that carried information like this and had a wide circulation, but what is left of that newspaper is now a pathetic joke. It would help if online publications like this one would help try to get such information out.

What are council members who genuinely want to represent the public going to do? Realize that this budget is a massive burden on citizens and send it back for cuts. They don't have to have people tell them that to comprehend the problem. Unfortunately, Washington now has a council that is almost all pathetic yes-men who will do what Boss Sadler wants. That needs to change.

Commented: Wednesday, June 25th, 2025 @ 3:49 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Joe Rogan demolished Bernie Sanders on the issue of "global warming" when Sanders appeared on Rogan's podcast. Sanders gave the usual globalist blather and Rogan took him apart with facts.
www.thegatewaypundit.com

Commented: Wednesday, June 25th, 2025 @ 1:40 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

City government is a two man show. The current city council is a toothless joke because a majority is in the mayor's hip pocket. If he says jump, they ask "how high?". Between the major and the manager, I suspect that if the item in on the mayor's personal agenda, he calls the shots, and if not, it is the manager. Of course, Sadler's wife is the power behind his throne, and in many ways, she may be the one calling the shots. At city council meetings, one can witness her furiously texting the mayor up at the front telling him what to do, and him looking down at his phone reading her text instructions. And she holds no elected office. What a sad state our city government is in. Our school board and county are not any better.

Commented: Sunday, June 22nd, 2025 @ 11:23 am By: Concerned Taxpayer