Comments by David Hudson | Eastern NC Now

Mr. Garrison, I attended those meetings and spoke out myself against the closing of Snowden. Those statements were not political. They were based on doing what was right for the community, which was to keep the local school open and operating in the area from which it's student population was drawn. There were elected officials who spoke out as well against closing the school (Charles Hickman, Stacey Davis, Stan Deatherage, Hood Richardson and the late Mayor Williams). I do not believe their statements were political just because they hold office. In fact, their reasons against closing the school were the same as the many, many other non-elected citizens who spoke out against closing the school. I don't recall ever hearing anyone speak out in support of closing the school at those meetings. Having the courage and fortitude to stand up, speak out, and work for your community is what is required and expected from a leader and an elected official. It's not politics, it's doing what is right. In my opinion, you fell way short of the bar.

Commented: Monday, November 10th, 2025 @ 2:13 pm By: David Hudson

Mr. Williams – I recognize, and appreciate, that you did vote against closing Snowden when the final vote was held. I believe you did represent the feelings and desires of the overwhelming majority of people not only south of the Pamlico, but across the county as a whole in doing so. I belatedly realized that I had only named those County Commissioners and School Board members who voted in favor of closing the school in my article discussing the issue published on June 6th and not those who voted against the decision.

Commissioners Richardson, Deatherage and Dunn, in addition to School Board members Hickman and Davis also cast votes for saving the school, which was the correct decision in my opinion. They were all outspoken critics of closing the school and sought ways to prevent the closure during the process. I wish that you had been more outspoken about keeping the school open in public comments during the meetings concerning the issue. As a former Infantry officer, I was taught and believe that there is no substitute for leadership by example as expounded in the Infantry motto: "Follow Me!" I feel that your position as Vice Chair of the School Board and having served multiple terms on that board place you in a position that could have helped convince or sway the votes of other members into making the same choice as you. Regardless, when the time came, you made the correct decision to vote against closing Snowden in my opinion.

Commented: Thursday, July 10th, 2025 @ 2:15 pm By: David Hudson

“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.”
― Molière

Washington ranked 5th on Budget Travel's list of "America’s Coolest Small Towns" in 2015.

Let's make Washington a great place to live for our residents and a great place to visit for everyone else! We should not be holding ourselves back or limiting opportunity for anyone.
Thank you Mr. Fritz for your vision and willingness to serve!

Commented: Tuesday, June 17th, 2025 @ 5:14 pm By: David Hudson

Mr. Ceres, I can support some of your findings but disagree slightly with your conclusion regarding what I consider Cheeseman’s resume bullet, the consolidated school being built in Washington, and the folly of closing the S. W. Snowden school in Aurora. Like you, I also attended a large high school with a student population of more than 2,000 students that was ranked among the top 100 high schools in the nation. This was a public school in central Florida. The student to teacher ratio was about 25 students per classroom although the advanced/gifted classes tended to be slightly smaller. I believe this smaller student to teacher ratio directly correlated to the success of the graduates. I attended a college that had a smaller student population than my high school and even smaller student to professor ratios on average. I believe this directly contributes to the quality of education received by the students.

When it comes to community schools and the importance of keeping them close to where students reside, I believe that is necessary just as the ability to retain those smaller student/teacher ratios is vital. My high school was fed from three elementary schools which fed into two middle schools. These schools were located within the communities they served, the students could walk or ride their bikes to school. Start times were offset to facilitate the best interest of the students and their pre- and after- school activities. I believe we can both agree that this model of education better serves communities, parents and most importantly students better than consolidated schools, regardless of student/teach ratios, that are located outside of the communities they serve. I would also posit that unfortunately, the education you and I received 30 or so years ago was superior to what is currently being taught and the standards children are being held to in today’s public education system. We can look at the vast increase (88% in administrative bureaucracy vs. 8-10% in student/teacher population growth) over the past 25 years as cause for the symptoms we are seeing in today’s public schools. The article points to the fact we have less parental involvement or awareness of what is being taught to our children. It is more difficult for parents to be involved, especially in our county where most folks have to work long hours and aren’t able to be as involved as they would like to be because schools have been removed from the communities they serve.

As far as large, consolidated schools and high student/teacher ratios, I lived in Charleston, S.C. prior to moving back home to Beaufort County. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, issue that led to my decision to move back home was the terrible state of education in Charleston. Schools were located within 10 miles of where anybody lived. However, while there were several (2-3) elementary and middle schools, there was only one high school. This was a result of a lack of competence, future planning ability, or just negligence on the part of the local school board, town and county governments. The average student to teacher ratio in the elementary schools was 30 students per teacher. My children had to get on a bus at 5:45 in the morning and didn’t get home until after 4:00 in the afternoon because of the number of stops and amount of traffic in the area. This was insane! I also had to explain to my kindergarten children what it meant to have “two daddies or mommies” because this was being taught in school. I have lived this before and left to get my family away from this indoctrination and consolidation. Now I see it repeating itself here in Beaufort County. The line must be drawn, and common sense must prevail.

Concerning fiduciary responsibility, Cheeseman spent close to an hour of what should have been a public hearing justifying the need to close Snowden based solely on money. I don’t believe this to be true. In fact, I don’t believe Cheeseman really cares at all about the success of Beaufort County Schools or our students. Remember that we had zero (0) underperforming schools in our county prior to him becoming superintendent. On his watch, we saw that number climb to eight ( underperforming schools that fortunately through the hard work and dedication of our teachers (not county administrators) has dropped to six (6) which is still an abysmal track record on Cheeseman’s part. Remember also that Cheeseman is required by state statute to receive a performance review due to the number of underperforming schools in our county and that the weak school board has failed to provide this to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). This is a violation of state statute, illegal to call it what it really is and this has been proven through public records requests as mentioned in other articles in the Observer. However, I digress. The school board under Cheeseman’s guidance or by his decision alone, have sent numerous contracts out of the county for higher dollar expenditures. These include grounds maintenance, BCS website development/maintenance, the school board attorney (a Durham based attorney who is head of the Democratic Party and also represents DPI, if that isn’t a conflict of interest) and others. Why are we sending contracts out of county for more money? Is it corruption, kick-backs or some other reason. I mentioned this at the public hearing last week and asked for Cheeseman to please provide those answers as well as a few others at the next public hearing. I won’t hold my breath on that. I also questioned why we don’t have a grant writer on staff at BCS? We used to have one. Wouldn’t that position be worth the investment as they could actively seek out funding that Cheeseman says we need but can’t get and better serve our county schools? If the school board or Cheeseman were anything but incompetent, wouldn’t they have realized the need to build a consolidated school, somewhere between Aurora and Chocowinity prior to now and used the lottery funds for that endeavor? Many folks may not know but I stated to anyone who would listen that Snowden would be closed the minute the funding became available to build the mega-school in Washington. Unfortunately, I am afraid that scenario may come to fruition. School consolidation, as well as the effort to bring leftist curricula into our schools seems to be Cheeseman’s preferred modus operandi. Look at where he bragged about having built his resume last week: New Jersey, Philadelphia, California and other left leaning, blue states before coming here. Beaufort County cannot afford the likes of him, culturally or financially if our future and the futures of our children are truly important, and I would argue they are most important. Not the resume bullets Cheeseman hopes to get before moving on to another higher paying job at a larger school district somewhere else. This weak school board needs to grow a spine, listen to their constituents and start doing what is right for our citizens and county. It’s not hard. If they don’t want to do the work, the door is always open for them to resign or quit and let others who actually care about our students and communities take on the yoke of leadership themselves. If not, we better vote them out come reelection time because we cannot afford their corruption, waste, fraud, abuse and incompetence anymore!

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 11:35 pm By: David Hudson

I am not a fan of fiction myself and rarely read it unless required to. I can appreciate good satire for what it is, and whoever this so-called Avenger is, he does make a point. If healing wounds and advancing the cause of the party is a top priority and true concern, I’m of the opinion that limiting the ability for people who want to participate to do so, excluding certain members of the party because their viewpoints differ from those of others, using the Executive Committee as a PAC instead of a collaborative group of all party members, and attempting to consolidate power and control among a select few stands completely counter to that position.

I did attend the county convention and witnessed first-hand Keith Kidwell dictating to people how to vote and yelling at them when they chose to vote against his wishes. I witnessed Kidwell attempt to limit, not expand, the ability of our citizens to participate and serve on the Executive Committee and then explain that America is not a democracy. He is correct to some extent because we are a constitutional federal republic. However, at the lowest, grassroots beginning of our political process, each person who chooses to vote does so in a democratic process where each voice is heard. So, in my opinion, the U.S. is a democracy because we, the people, hold the ultimate political power. We aren’t a “direct democracy”, however, we are a “representative democracy.” That’s because we exercise our political power in a different way: by voting in elections to choose our representatives. That is what makes us a “representative democracy”. The Constitution doesn’t use the term “democracy” but notable Americans such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Noah Webster and Chief Justice John Marshall all used the term. Those men understood representative democracy – the American variety – to be democracy all the same.

When a motion to allow anyone who wished to volunteer to serve on the Executive Committee was made, Keith Kidwell made a motion to not only prevent this but to limit the number of individuals who could serve on the committee from what previously had been 21-24 seats to a smaller number capped at 15 seats. Limiting control of government to a few cronies as opposed to opening it up to anyone who wants to participate is elitist and the type of politics we see coming from New Jersey and New York...remember your history and Tammany Hall. Furthermore, Joseph Knox made a motion to try and prevent an open discussion/debate of the issue. Fortunately, both of these attempts failed, and the Executive Committee is now composed of approximately 45 individuals. While Keith Kidwell may vote conservatively on issues when in Raleigh, he is no true conservative or friend to the Beaufort County citizen. He actively endorses the RINOs in our county that have corrupted our county government, allowing for a weak School Board and County Commission. These are nothing more than power plays so that a few can remain in power and share power for their own personal benefit. That's the same type of corruption we saw in politics in Iraq and Afghanistan during my 14 years of military service to these United States. We deserve better.

It's possible that some party members are offended that these details are being made public as they don’t reflect well on the messaging that has been coming out of the Executive Committee and senior party leadership in the county for years. But let’s face it, these folks are already up to their same old shenanigans. Why else would Carolyn Garris need to appoint a “Chairman's Advisory Committee” stating the members of this “esteemed committee” are Keith Kidwell, Ashley Woolard, Sandy Hardy and Paul Varcoe? Why does she require a personal committee more limited in size than the Executive Committee as a whole? What makes this committee “esteemed”? This was not announced to or voted on by the Executive Committee as we haven’t had the first meeting yet. Remember that these same folks voted against expanding the size of the Executive Committee. Additionally at a previous convention, it was Kidwell who filed a false report with the Sheriff that Mr. Richardson had slapped a woman at the convention. Also, Paul Varcoe harassed Hood Richardson to the point that charges were brought against him for pushing Richardson at the same convention. This is dirty politics at its best.

Concerning the first meeting of the new Executive Committee to be held on April 10th, why is it being held in Aurora? This location is not centrally located as Washington is. Is this an attempt to make it more difficult for everyone to attend? Also, why is there a $10 fee to attend, supposedly for refreshments? That’s a high price for a few refreshments and what should be a relatively short meeting. Remember the price to attend the county convention was only $5, a meeting which lasted close to six hours with only refreshments being offered that ran out well before the meeting was over.

One last question would be why Gail Breed is listed as “Acting Secretary”? Who appointed her? This wasn’t brought to the attention of the Executive Committee as a whole or voted on by said committee. I believe it was April Holloway who was elected at the county convention to serve as Secretary. Why isn’t she attending or involved? Could it be she received severe criticism or backlash because she chose to remain neutral and abstained from voting on issues regarding the Executive Committee during the convention. She should be applauded for her courage and fortitude.

The observations and concerns that I mention here appear to me to be a violation on the part of several members of the Executive Committee to abide by the 2024 North Carolina Republican Party Platform document which states: “ARTICLE V. STATE GOVERNMENT 1. We believe that in a free society, power should rest in the hands of the people. We believe in a limited government which serves the people, rather than one that burdens them.”

The people of Beaufort County are waking up to what has been going on. If our goal really is to heal wounds and advance the cause of the party in our county, then an environment that is inclusive to all, welcomes and facilitates open discussion and eliminates centralized control and back-room meetings is the first step toward achieving that goal.

Commented: Friday, April 4th, 2025 @ 12:36 pm By: David Hudson

This is a wonderful organization! Bam is a true role model and the people of Beaufort County are blessed that he not only remembers where he came from, but he continues to give back so that others can achieve their dreams and goals as well.

Commented: Tuesday, March 18th, 2025 @ 2:09 pm By: David Hudson