Read the September 2011 issue of the CCTPP Newsletter at the link below:

CCTPP Newsletter-9-11

MINUTES OF CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
AUGUST 23, 2011

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order by President BOB CAVANAUGH at 6:05 pm
Pledge of Allegiance led by WAYNE WILLIS
Invocation by HARRY THOMPSON

INTRODUCTION and WELCOME OF NEW ATTENDEES –
Angela Kowalski, Fred Oglesby, and Lorraine Maiden

BOB introduced our guest speaker of the evening David Horton, Candidate for Mayor of Morehead City.

David thanked BOB and ERIC BROYLES for inviting him and told us we had the honor of witnessing his first political speech.  He said he ran for city councilman 8 years ago and at that time there were only four running for three seats and so he didn’t have to give a political speech.  He won and was a councilman twice and was top vote getter both times even though he was not born here, but he has lived here a long time.  He said he sometimes feels like the TEA Party does; when he goes into a meeting and is concerned about facts and figures and the other members don’t care what the numbers are or how much; so when he brings them up, he is treated kinda like the bad guy…not a team player.  He knows that the TEA Party gets some of that.  But those are important things and he believes they are ‘the important things’ and he intends to continue bringing them up.  For a little background about himself: he has been married for 29 years to his wife Missy.  She grew up in Apex but went to high school here.  They have 4 children ages 11 to 28.  One is through college, 2 almost through college and one, 11, at home.  He was born in Charlotte.  His father was with the Miami Herald, so he moved, at an early age, to Miami, where he grew up.  When he got old enough, he came back to NC, went to UNC, Chapel Hill, and got a business degree and graduated in 1977.  A few years later he went to East Carolina and got a MBA and graduated in 1981.  His first job out of college was working with a big lumber company, in sales.  His next job, after he got his master’s degree, was with Owens Hill Illinois in Toledo, in their development program.  He was lucky enough to end up in eastern NC.  He and his wife loved this area, so he wrote a letter to Connors Mobile Home (which back then was a big booming business with stock prices going through the ceiling and growing like crazy), and Wallace Connor agreed to take him.   So he came down to work in marketing, but actually ended up in finance, which is what he really liked.  He got to be in charge of the loan processing and all the repossessions, (and they had tons of them), and credit.  As that business went down, (and there is a lot of similarities to what our Country is doing now), he went to work for Oakwood Homes, a different part of the curve.  His boss was in Greensboro, and he stayed there until he got a bigger position in collections that was over the whole country and had a million dollar portfolio.  Being in big corporate America, he had always wanted to own his own company, so; since his wife’s family had a moving company here (Acme Moving and Storage/Allied Van Lines), he came here, taking a cut in pay, but (hoping to get a chance to buy the company in the future) started off loading trucks.  Didn’t have any money, but by saving; two years later he had equity in his house, and they sold the house and made a down payment to buy the business.  All he had in the world he put into that business and it turned out to be a really good investment and they did very well.   He owned it for about 12 years, until 2000, when he sold it.  The highlight of that career was that they won the ‘Mover of the Year’ for the Southeast United States (whole southeaster US); which was a very big honor.  He said he didn’t say that to brag, but because management is important and working, developing, and managing business and employees and all those things are good background experience.   He has been on the Planning Board for Morehead City, Planning Board for Carteret County, Board of Adjustments, and City Council for 8 years.  The question is why would he want to run for mayor?   Since – initially, he had signed up to run for City Council again.  City Council members can vote whereas the Mayor cannot.  In a mayor system, the mayor kinda sets the agenda, leads the issues, etc.  So, it was a big question.  But when the Aurora Phosphate issue came up, it was right around the time he had already signed up for councilman.  He believes that the city manager, planner, and other people in the city knew what was coming down, and when they denied knowing, he was disappointed in our representatives, and decided it was time for a change in leadership.  So he switched and decided to run for mayor against the current mayor.  The current mayor had had a conflict.  He was president of the economic development council and there were issues about what they were allowed to discuss.  He feels like the city should have come first, and he thinks the citizens do also.  The day he heard about that smoke stack in Morehead City with scrubbers, and all, he was very upset.  As mayor, the things he wants to look for is much more openness and transparency.  He thinks when people have been in power for a very long time, (like we find in our own state and federal government, Senators, Representatives, etc) things get a little lax.  Some of our local representatives have been in power for at least 16 years, and are still there voting, like Paul Cordova.  There is going to be a big shift in the upcoming election and he thinks there needs to be.  He feels like, he with his business background and experience, can really work to help shift the transition.  We are definitely going to have three brand new city councilmen; some who have never before been councilmen, and that is the biggest change that Morehead City has had in politics in a long time and he is very excited about it.  In his business experience, he did sales, finance, hired/fired, etc.  At Oakwood he managed inside and outside collectors, (probably 70 people who reported to him) and with the Moving company he had about 50 people (at the height of the summer) working for him.  After he sold his moving company, he got into development (another thing he feels is important experience).  He and some others developed Blair Farms, (a big subdivision) with him as manager.  He sold the properties.  They had to put in water and sewer, lines all the way from there up to 20th Street and Mayberry Loop.  They had to supervise the water and sewer installation; put in roads and curbs, and infrastructure for all the amenities (like pools).  He was responsible for the budgeting, watching the work being done, making sure that budgets did not go over, and that is critical.  When you are borrowing money from the bank, like they were doing, you can not bid a project for $900,000 and have it come in for $1.4.  What we were doing is very similar to what a city does.  A city does a lot of stuff; streets, sidewalks, water/sewer, (some of our big expenses) just as they with Blair Farms were having to do, and they had to watch closely all their expenses.  With his education background of studying human resources, finance, marketing, statistics, and those types of things, along with his experience, he feels he has a broad educational background to serve as mayor.  When you are running a city, (not that he would be running it) but he would be one of the leaders that does, this type of background is very important.  Instead of making a speech about team work, and what he can do, he thought that instead he would give a speech that politicians don’t often give; he wanted to talk specifically about the things that go on in Morehead; specific departments. He asked how many in attendance actually live in Morehead.  Only two responded.  He went on the say that most of the surrounding areas may be in the ETJ but can not vote in the town election but are still impacted by what goes on in the city.  BOB said this was OK since the TEA Party listened and checked out the candidates and made voter recommendations.  BOB said he was not wasting his time speaking to only two Morehead City voters.  Mr. Horton was unaware of this policy.  BOB explained that we did not say “we support” or “we endorse”, or “vote for”; we only make recommendations.  At the last election, we handed out flyers at the polling sites with our recommendations.  Most of those we recommended won their elections.
Mr. Horton went on to say that the way Morehead City is run is; it is broken down into councils, or 5 different areas, which are Finance, Public Works, Fire and EMS, Water and Sewer, and Planning and Inspections.  Each council member is assigned to 2 committees.   He would like to talk about those 5 departments and what they do and what has been going on.  He doesn’t want to necessarily be critical, (but will be critical on some points), but to give suggestions as to how he thinks would have been a better possible way of doing things.  Most of it comes down to fiscal responsibility, because that is the problem he sees that we have.  Tax increases….did you all read in the paper that Morehead City was not only revenue neutral but a little bit higher.  They rounded up.  Revenue neutral is not really a true term.  You take the budget you had last year, then take the growth rate, (which for Morehead City was 2.65 this year) and then you come up with a new tax rate (old budget plus 2.65 which is about an extra 180 thousand dollars); so it is not revenue neutral.  Then when they rounded it up, that was another 30 thousand.  So our tax rate is a little more, significantly 200 thousand more than last year.  So the revenue neutral description is not real clear.  If you look at the recent past years here, we have gone through a huge growth phase in Morehead.   We have under gone a big growth spurt…all those condos out there on Radio Island, (huge value); boat slips; condos all around; new houses going up everywhere; Blair Farms probably has 200 houses; so the tax revenue/tax base has grown tremendously.  Over that same period, where it has grown, is one reason why we have not had to raise taxes.  At the same time, you would think, we would have been dealing with our infrastructure and giving raises to our employees.  Well, in the last four years, we have not given our employees any raise.  It’s not to say that you don’t have to give employees raises, but when you are building a 6 million dollar police station on which we borrowed 5 million dollars, it doesn’t seem fair.  The county contributed a million and we borrowed the other 5 million.  In other words, we borrowed the whole amount.  Also we bought a baseball park for over 2.4 million, for 1 million we bought water front access, for another 1.3 million we bought a piece of property down town where Otis’ was and so when you see that we are buying all these things and at the same time we are not even giving our employees raises, that is not a good thing.   These good, hardworking young employees need raises.  Mr. Horton said, when he was working, he worked really hard and wanted to be rewarded.  That is his philosophy.  It’s true, sometimes you can’t do it, but if you are spending that kind of money on non-essential items, I think that is a big problem.  In the Planning and Inspections Department one thing he noticed “ there is a big lag when you are building a big house, and you have your crew out there, and you get to the point where you have to have an inspection, your crew has to quit working and just stop.  If you only have just one house or one project going, when it gets to that point, you might call the Inspections Department and they say,  “Well, we can’t be there until late tomorrow afternoon, so you have all these employees unemployed with nothing to do.”  When he first got elected they had meetings and attempted to improve that situation.  Recently he has been building some metal buildings and kinda gotten into that situation himself, and he is going to suggest that they look into that again, because having those people, who need work so desperately, sitting around for days waiting on an inspection; that should be a very high priority.
Another thing is signs.  We changed the sign ordinance right before I got on as councilman and if you notice you will probably see, even out that window, because we made it so restricted, that when you go down the street now you see many businesses with a trailer and a big sign on the side of it.  Or it will be a truck with a sign painted on the side parked out front.  Also the way we changed the sign ordinance, now we have a mess.  I’d rather have a sign ordinance that the people agree to that makes our town look nice.  He has asked repeatedly that we address the problem again but no one wants to.   But, if he becomes mayor, it is a problem he will address, because he thinks the business owners would rather have adequate signage without having all these trailers sitting around.  If you haven’t noticed this before, look around, you will find it is unbelievable.
Zoning enforcement and planning inspections is uneven.  When you know of people that are exceptions to the rule, and the rules are not enforced for one group as they are to another, example, the baseball park.  When that baseball park went into that little neighborhood – there is a lady’s house that is so close – for example: if I were standing at the concession stand, I could throw a baseball and hit her house.  That is how close it is.  It was not zoned for a commercial or a ‘for-profit’ baseball park.  But the people who lived there did not have the money to hire a lawyer.  If you have been to the park, then you would see why she would be afraid.  He is not against baseball parks, but he is against putting baseball parks in places that hurt the people around them.  There are the lights; balls flying all over their yards; it is extremely loud; and a lot of people don’t really like it.  It is an example of ‘where it was not zoned for that activity and it should not have gone in there’.
In the Water and Sewer Department, when he first came on, we were in a moratorium, because we were having more than our plant could process.  We had done a lot of slip lining, which is where you go in and fix these lines.  You cover up to keep the infiltration from going into the line and that cuts it down.  When the infiltration slips into the line, then you have to treat it, so they did a lot of slip lining but there was no way to prove it was beneficial; so he contacted some professors from East Carolina because he figured statistically they could figure it out and they took it on as a project.  It took them about eight months and they came down here and had meetings with us.  They were PHDs, and we statistically proved the work that we did, by measuring the places and inflows and outflows, all those different steps, really proved that it did work and was cutting down the infiltration so they took us off the moratorium.  That was really good because we were going to be on moratorium for like four years until the new plant was finished.  So we got off the moratorium and built a new plant and now the new plant (that is his committee) is excellent.  The water goes into Calico Creek now and is just about drinkable.  You could probably drink it without getting sick (but he is not going to try it).  They have ultraviolet lights at the end instead of chlorine and so there is no chlorine in the water.  It is very good and is going to last us for a long time.  Now another thing about water/sewer – this is very discouraging – this year, you may have read in the paper (and he was very adamant about it), they are putting on a ten percent rate increase on the water and sewer rate, starting in December.   In the last seven years, we have had 5 ten percent increases and this will be the sixth.  When you multiply one point ten times one point ten times one point ten etc.; by the time you get to the sixth increase you have increased it 77%.  So this increase that we do is going to be a 77% increase from seven years ago.  Now that is big money.  What upsets he and  George Ballou, his chairman, was there wasn’t even a rate study done for it.  He went through it and there were all kinds of things they could do to save money.  They could have paid off some debt, which would have lowered their payments.  They could have analyzed what money was coming in.   He had all this information and went through it at the meetings – nothing.  When it came time to vote, he and George Ballou (who were on the Water/Sewer Committee) voted against the increase and the three guys who did not know anything about the subject; they didn’t study it or anything; they voted for the increase, because the city wanted it.  That rate increase is coming to be, without a study, January 1.  It just blows his mind.
Another thing, when we bought the piece of property down town, we bought it from Doug Brady; it was where Capt. Otis’ was, and we paid 1.3 million for it.  The tax value was 700 thousand.  He said he jumped up and down about buying it, but they did buy it.  They took a loan from the Water & Sewer (650 thousand dollars) and put it into the General Fund (borrowed it!).  They paid one percent interest to the Water & Sewer Fund.  Well… the Water & Sewer fund is borrowed money at 4.45% from other things.  He was going “Why are you doing a 1% when we are paying 4.45%?”  He didn’t want to borrow money in the first place. With that 650 thousand dollars gone from the Water & Sewer fund, there wasn’t enough money left, so they used that as the basis for the sewer rate increase.  That 650 thousand dollars would have been sitting in that account and could have been used instead of the rate increase.
Another thing that was done was they bought a piece of property that was next to the baseball park.  Have you ever been to the back side of the park?  There is a road that goes back there where there is a big field.  They bought that and they spent 280 thousand dollars on that little bit of property and they paid the engineer (he thought $140,000) to design a tank which will never be there.  They baseball park uses it for utilities and the Water and Sewer fund paid for the road and property and they did not ask for the Water and Sewer fund to be paid back.  They will not pay it back and $280,000 from the Water & Sewer Fund directly benefited the baseball park.  He has become known as a trouble maker because he does not like to sit there, when he knows this stuff is going on, and just be quiet.  It really bothers him.
He read in the paper, about a month and a half ago, about a bid for water and sewer lab and offices, which is his committee and he didn’t even know anything about it, so he called George Ballou, and asked, ‘what was this bid about’?  Had he forgotten about it?  George said he didn’t know what it was, so he, David, called and found out that the City Manager and Mr. Lewis had gone out; gotten bids for a project that they had developed, and gotten an engineer to design it, (which cost $40,000 to design), without even talking to the committee about it.  That project ended up being $180 a square foot for basic offices, basic simple lab, $40,000 engineering fee, for a 3500 square foot building.   We voted against it and again the other three guys voted for it.  That contract was just let about a month ago.
And then on the baseball team, which he had talked about, it was unbelievable that you could build a $2.4 million dollar baseball park and parking space and you are using it for a “for profit” team.  You are letting a ‘for profit team’ use it (that is why it is as big as it is) and you don’t even have a long term lease.  We built it; we never had a long term lease; nor do we now have a long term lease.  That team can walk away tomorrow and we have nothing.  And they are talking now about building more bathrooms, and more stuff out there, and the team has no skin in the game.  If he had rental property, he would not build something for a tenant if he didn’t (something specialized like that) even have a long term lease; but Morehead City did.  We are subsidizing that thing to the tune of, he would say, $100,000 a year.  The town is getting $15,000 a year from that team and Morehead is paying for all the utilities.  We bought all the kitchen equipment for them; pay for all the garbage; pay for care of the whole field; and all we are getting is the $15,000 a year.  Not a very good return.  Those are some of the things that he gets aggravated/angry about.
The Charles Wallace School on Bridges Street; (which when he got elected, he and a partner were looking at buying and converting it into condos,) but the city bought it for a million dollars (a whole city block); which was a great investment.  He also came up with the idea of selling the two water front lots which were on Sunset Drive that were just sitting there, and this was during the height of the height.  He said these two lots are 50 foot lots and each sold for $700,000 and they got 1.4 million dollars for two lots which they had had no use for and now there is a tax base on them.   They used that money to buy the school and they had money left over.  That is the kind of deals he likes.  We got better property and money left over.  Wayne Willis asked that before he got away from Otis’s Fish House property, he wanted to ask a simple yes or no question ….’do you have any idea if that property was worth a million four dollars (yes or no) that went in Doug Brady’s pocket.’  Mr. Horton replied that was what he got for it.  Wayne still wanted to know if it was worth it to the city, and Mr. Horton said at one point they were going to pay 2 million for it and he had said that was crazy.  The land that went with that little bit of water front property was 3 thousand square feet.  You could park maybe two cars on it.  Wayne said he knew about the property, he had been going there longer than Mr. Horton had, but what he could not figure out was who dreamed this figure up other than Doug Brady.  Mr. Horton said Doug Brady got an appraisal that was crazy and another guy appraised it for $700,000. There was a permit to build a condo on it, which couldn’t be built because there was not room for parking, but the appraiser said with this permit; if you are going to build condos, then it could be worth $500,000 more.  Mr. Horton’s contention was ‘we are not going to build condos’, so that permit is not worth anything to us.  That is how the amount came about.  At the same time he found a bunch of other pieces of property that were much better; because everybody wanted to sell; but the council would not consider any other property – they had to have that piece.  Question was raised ‘what were they going to do with the school, now that they have bought it.  Were they planning to tear it down?’  Mr. Horton said they have owned that school for seven years and still have no plans for it.  When they built that 6 million dollar police station, and the architect came with his plans, Mr. Horton had asked ‘didn’t you consider using the school?’  That school is sitting there with probably 60,000 square feet and that could be part of a police station.  The architect said ‘no, they did not consider it.’  Mr. Horton said, ‘you didn’t consider any of it?’ and the architect said, ‘no, he was told not to consider the school.’  So here this school has been setting for seven years and it was never considered, not at all, so we build a brand new six million dollar facility.  The county started off they were going to pay us four million and he asked ‘then why did they only give us 990 thousand for their share of that building’…. So we borrowed 5 million.  If you guys get chance to see that new police station, it is nice.  It is all tile, with twelve foot aisles; it is unbelievable.  There is almost two hundred thousand dollars in the security system.  He had asked why did they need a two hundred thousand dollar security system inside a police station – aren’t the police safe inside there?  Actually we don’t do a real good job in the bidding process.  We just bought a four thousand dollar boat for the fire department (with no bids).  He doesn’t know how they did it with no bids but they bought it locally, so that is a good thing.  Right now you can buy used boats for unbelievable amounts but we bought a brand new one.
The police department, which he had touched on, is not a big police department.  If you had seen our old building down there, it was very small; so we went from a small police station to a huge one.  They paid two hundred and thirty six thousand for furniture for our little police force.  We paid five hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars for the architect and engineer, (just to design it and watch it being built.) I’ve been involved in lots of projects, and lots of things, but I have never seen any private industry ever do anything like that.  The police force has a high turnover-rate, and one thing he found when he had his moving company, you do not want a high turnover rate, and that also is the last thing a police department wants or needs.  I always question why that high turnover. We need to do exit interviews and determine why those people are leaving.  He thinks it is because of money.  They pay them very low entry level fees.  People come in, get trained, and soon as they get a year or two of training, they go on to another place and make about seven thousand more.  So we have become a training ground.  He asked the audience, ‘if we were out there would we rather have one experienced policeman come to our house, or two rookies?’  As for him, he would rather have the experience.  If he were mayor he would really work for increases in pay for the Morehead City employees.  It is a great place for them to work, a place for them to have opportunity to be paid fairly, adequate training, with rules across all the departments that are the same.  We don’t have instructions spelled out and he has been trying for years to get one –orientation is important also.   The same things he did in his moving company are applicable.  He didn’t know if anyone had dealings with the company, but most of those employees who worked for him are still there and that is what makes a city also – good reliable employees.  So in summary, why I want to be mayor, I want to save tax payers money.  I don’t like to see money wasted.  I own property in Morehead and I don’t like to see my money wasted either.  I am getting ready to pay a lot of taxes this year and if you live in Morehead, you can get your county bill one day and the next day you get your city bill and it’s doubled.  So we are paying big time this year.  So we need to watch our expenses.  We need to work on our current infrastructure after this bubble we have been through, our streets should be in the best condition because the time we just went through is the best time we are going to have in a long time.  Right now, our budget should be stable, our debt should be going down; instead, our debt has gone higher.  It’s sad.  Our streets and sidewalks are in deplorable shape.  We haven’t done any repairs because we felt the cost of asphalt was too high, so we kept putting it off.  The cost of asphalt is now twice as high.  He just called to get a simple driveway paved on a new storage building he just built, and it was fifty-five hundred dollars and the rock was already down.  If you have not priced the cost of asphalt recently, it is unbelievable.  Cities and municipalities need to really start facing that fact, and reserve monies every year; you need to keep that water and sewer maintained.  I think if I get to be mayor, the same things that have made me successful as a developer, and successful in the moving company, will help the town.  So that’s it.  That’s my story.
FRED DECKER said he heard (from a reliable source) a few years back about those high rise condos on Radio Island (owned by Doug Brady he understood)…Mr. Horton said he did own them but had since sold them….that other property owners over there had tried to get permission to build but could not get building permits.  He had asked why only Mr. Brady was able to receive a permit to build; that, while they were not residents, they did own property on Radio Island, but were still unable to obtain a permit.  He understood that Mr. Brady was trying to buy the property from these owners and he felt this was the reason they could not get permits to build that he (Mr. Brady) was in with the Morehead City council.  Mr. Horton said ‘he did not have him in his hip pocket’.  This must have been prior to eight years ago, because by the time he was involved, they looked at the projects but had never denied anyone building permits, while he was there.  Mr. Decker said this was right after the Brady condos were built.  Question was raised if these condos were in the Morehead City area.  They are in the city limits.  Various other questions on Mr. Brady and property were raised and answered to the best of Mr. Horton’s ability.  EULA PARKIN said she lived in Beaufort and they had a lot of sewage problems, and it doesn’t matter whether you turn your faucet on and pour out one glass of water or take a lot of showers, wash clothes, etc.…the minimum bill is $51.00 a month and from there it goes up.  Her water bill sometimes runs as high as $90.00 a month.  Mr. Horton said, he thought that the reason for the high cost is because the town went for so many years without maintenance.  They had to borrow a lot of money, which they are making payments on, and there are not enough people to pay for it.   They were hoping North River (that golf course out there) would help it.  But that has been a fiasco, so that is what happens when you put off repairs for a long time.  Just like with the streets, if you put off fixing your streets for five years and it would cost you say $500,000 a year, then there is $2.5 million all of a sudden you need to get caught up to speed and all you can do is borrow it.  Then when you borrow it, you are paying interest; they’ve stretched the time out, so you are paying longer and the next thing you know you have a ton of debt.  We have picked up a lot of debt here recently with our new water/sewer system.  Question was raised ‘was the cost of design and architect service increased due to changes made to the original idea…move this here or add this to that, etc…so the engineers have to go back and redesign.  Mr. Horton said that is what was said on that $40,000 bill on the square foot but still he had built a house with an architect that was about that size that was no where near $40,000.  However, it is pretty standard; if you build a six million dollar building, then it is going to be about 10%.  That is the thing, so if you build, and put that security system in there that the architect designed, you are paying 10% for that too.  If you do these extravagant things you have huge bills.  His contention is a lot of that stuff (we are getting ready to do the same thing with the fire station down there) he would not pay an architect to do it.  Architects are good in certain circumstances, but they are also very expensive.  ERIC BROYLES said he had read the town council minutes available on line and many times Mr. Horton has stood up and spoken against the expenditure of monies on projects like the baseball park.  He understands that Mr. Horton is OK with the $900,000.00 but now the 2.4 million…similar projects like the 1.3 project referred to as the Jib property, (or as ERIC refers to as the property to no where), Mr. Horton has stood up against those.  As mayor, will you be able to control what is sent to the city council?  Mr. Horton replied ‘Not completely, but he thinks a lot of the ways he can make a difference is the mayor and city council have a lot more influence on the city manager.  The way it is now, he has almost no influence on the city manager, because he is not the one who has the three votes.  The three votes rule.  ERIC said that was not exactly what he was asking.  “You have a city manager out of control.  He is who is driving this engine.  I think he spends wildly.”  ERIC’s question is ‘Will you, as mayor, be able to control his putting things across?”  Mr. Horton said he hoped so; example the baseball park….  We had a long term contract that we had worked on for at least a couple of months, i.e. the sound system, score board, all these different things, 10% of concessions….it still wasn’t a good deal, but it was a lot better than the deal we got.  When they found out they weren’t going to get beer; then that very night at the meeting, they said in this new contract they were going to pay nothing.  They were not going to buy the scoreboard; sound system; the town was going to pay for all their restaurant equipment, etc.  That deal came right before the meeting and it got voted on.  George Ballou and he went absolutely ballistic … what is going on?  They voted for that 3 to 2.  If I were mayor I would not even consider something like that.  ERIC said, ‘so the mayor can control the flow of what comes before the council?’  Mr. Horton said, ‘if the council would stand up and not go along with that last second stuff, it would be stopped.  Right now everything happens in the last second and if you get three votes that’s it.  That’s politics.  If you get one more vote than the other side, you win.  Question:  Can’t you carry it over until the next meeting?  Mr. Horton said to table it you still have to have a majority of the votes; a minority can not table it.  Stuff like this is why Mr. Horton said he is running for mayor.  He feels it is more valuable to give up one vote and be mayor and have more input over the system.  The mayor would have more input than a single councilman.  The mayor really sets the tone for a lot of things like what comes in and what goes on.  The mayor is more involved than a councilman.  A councilman can get involved sometimes, but a mayor gets involved in everything, like meeting with the group, and what is feasible and what is not.  He controls the flow, but has no vote, only to break a tie and he did not recall Mr. Jones ever doing that.  Question – who is going to take your place as councilman?  Mr. Horton said ‘there are seven people running for three seats which is really, really good.  He has no idea who is going to win.  It is a totally new group, and he feels like, no matter who wins, any combination of three is going to rule.  John Nelson is not running again, nor Paul Cordova.  John and Paul, both, have done great things for this town and he is not just standing here running them down, but when you get in some place for a really long time, and you are just running things; it’s just what happens.  They have done some really great things, but after a while, we need a change.  They are not running again so they are gone and a new regime is about to begin.  Question was asked by BOB if they get retirement.  Mr. Horton said he knew it sounded crazy but he had tried to stop this one time …. The question of insurance came up and as everyone knows insurance is very valuable.  He said his opinion was that the ones serving on the council were getting older and if you took the average age of the council, getting insurance for that age group brought the cost up.  He recommended ‘let’s give up our insurance’.  Majority opposed.  That was their right, and that is a big benefit.  He was asked what he made and he said he thought he got three or four hundred a month.  He was not sure what the mayor gets.

He thanked everyone for their attention and asked for those able to vote, to remember him.  If anyone had any further questions, to please call him and if we knew anyone in Morehead able to vote, please ask them to vote for him.  He has signs if anyone would like one.

BOB said ‘That was a fast 15 minutes’.  HOWARD said ‘but it was very interesting what he covered’.
BOB said to KEN LANG he understood that KEN had something he wanted to talk about.  KEN said he had several items but would pass on at least one of them until our next meeting.  KEN said he had some written information he was leaving for anyone interested.  One announces the Crystal Coast TEA Parties meetings (both the one here and the one in western Carteret/Cedar Point).  If you know of a business that will allow us to post the flyer in their place of business, please take one or as many as you think you can get posted, or maybe take some for people that you think will be willing to go around to places they know and ask for permission to post.  This is a cheap way to get the word out about our meetings.  Other thing, at the meeting in Cedar Point, we talked about the election of Justices and Justice Newby is running as a conservative.  The forms he is leaving, are information Newby passed out at his campaign meeting.   Justice Newby is running for NC Supreme Court.  Mr. Lang said he believed that Justice Newby said if he collected enough money that it would be unlikely that anyone would oppose him.  There is a limit on how much he can collect, also.  This is a form, that if you want to donate; then please fill out and donate $5.00 or $10.00 or more.  You have to fill out the form and send it in with your check.  He can not start collecting monies until September 1.  We need conservative justices on our court, so we need to get information on those running in the state, as well as the federal level.  He has posted an article of interest on our website.  HOWARD said he thought he was telling it right, he has to get x number of people (not sure of the number) to donate in order to get matching funds from the state.  If he does not get enough people then he will not get matching funds.  KEN said he thought Howard was right on that.  FRED said Justice Newby’s campaign signs state he is conservative.  Several weeks ago NANCY BOCK mentioned something that was discussed at a Board of Commissioners Meeting about a $5 million surplus or something like a reserve; so he talked to one of our commissioners the other day about it and basically the Board of Education had $5 million that was not earmarked for anything or listed in their budget expenditures.  Over a period of several months, while this whole budget mess going on, they kept asking them what the money was for.  Answer was ‘well, we’ve got it designated for something but we are not ready to talk about it yet.  They kept evading the question.  As I understand it, about a week before the fiscal year ended, they still had the $5 million as undesignated.  This is all while Superintendent Novey was getting ready to lay off ninety teachers/employees.  He was told by Commissioner Robin Comer (who will remain unnamed) that there was no way they could spend that five million dollars in the week before the end of the year and yet they still would not tell the Board of Commissioners what that money was for.  So, the answer to the question that was originally raised is the Board of Commissioners still has no idea what that five million dollars is because they never got an answer.  Commissioner Comer says they will continue asking but that is apparently all they can do.  He said HOWARD said before the meeting that C4 was at the Board of Commissioners meeting still asking for more money.  HOWARD said that is demanding; not asking.  KEN said he thinks that the County Commissioners should say to the Board of Education, ‘as soon as you can explain that five million dollars we might think about more money.’  He also was talking to Mr. Comer about the buses and bus drivers (does not remember all the numbers) but just to give some idea – say like 50 buses out running around all over town – they have like 100 to 150 drivers certified to drive those buses.  Now Robin had some issues with fact that they were spending so much money on bus maintenance; paying overtime for bus drivers; and stuff like that, so Ken asked why are they paying money for overtime for bus drivers?  If they have two or three drivers per bus, why are they paying overtime?  Why can’t they divide the drivers up and avoid paying any overtime at all.  Robin said that was a good point, he would ask them that the next chance he got.  Robin has been asking some really good questions but that one he overlooked.  It is things like this that makes you wonder how they manage the money the Board of Education is spending on our school system.  If they are spending all this money on overtime, they don’t have to spend, (I can understand it if they didn’t have enough qualified drivers) but they have two to three times more drivers than they have buses.  HOWARD said he was told by some of the commissioners and Pat McElraft that we would not have to lay off any teachers; that there was plenty of money to pay the teachers, yet Novey still decided to cut.  KEN said yes, Novey did decide to cut, even though the state legislature down to county commissioners have said that enough money was provided, that they did not have to lay off even one teacher; yet Novey’s doing it and blaming the county commissioners and the state for not giving him the money he wants.  KEN also wanted to make note that we had four editorials published in the Carteret County News Times last week.  That is great.  Thank you.  They were all good.  KEN said he had two other topics but, since he has a rule that he has to run out of here soon after 7:00 so he won’t turn into a pumpkin, he will skip one of them until a later meeting, but he wanted to call our attention to a subject, that if we want to discuss at the meeting tonight that is fine but he is gathering more information.  He had a call from a guy last night, you may have heard of him – but KEN said he had not …. the man said he was sort of infamous here in Carteret County …. Said his name was Nelson Paul.  Nelson Paul is involved in the issue of the signs at East Carteret High School because of the Scenic Byway.  It is interesting that he formerly worked for CAMA; is an environmental scientist; lives in Raleigh; owns property in the Harkers Island area; and concerned about the Scenic Byway.  He is also the one that was involved in the wind turbine issue.  When he mentioned the turbines to KEN, Ken asked that that subject be held for later discussion; that he had some issues with him about that, but would prefer that wait until a later date because he did not want to muddle the issue of the Scenic Byways that they were trying to discuss.  KEN called Mr. Paul back this morning after receiving an email from BOB in which BOB had said he thought Mr. Paul had been a litigant and was involved with the signs.  Well, he sort of was.  Story was he was having email communication with a gentleman named Jim Jennings, who was the county planner, and in it he made some comments that got passed on to the county commissioners and then got published in the paper.  He told KEN that it was not intended to be that way.  His motivation basically is this Scenic Byway commission was created by the County Commissioners as a non-regulatory group and therefore warranted no public discussion or debate because it was just going to be this ad-hoc kind of group.   He complained in this email because he contends that it is a regulatory group because they put rules in place that say you can not put signs at the school; that you can’t do a business here or a parking lot there.  So he is saying they can’t do any regulation without doing a regulatory process.  Ken thinks this warrants an investigation and gave the following names of interest.  Involved in this Scenic Byway is a lady named Karen Almspacker (?), Barbara Garrity Blake (who ran against Jean Preston, running as a conservative but it was pretty obvious she was about as far left as you can get), a group called Salt Water Connections.org (a left wing environmental group), Duke University Nichols School of Environment, (Duke is about as left wing as you can get and this school is also left wing and guess what….they
have ties to Agenda 21, which we have talked about here at our meetings (which does away with personal property rights, and confiscation of property, and stuff like that).  They are also involved with the Core Sound Museum, which is not just a museum; they want to be much more than that.  There are a lot of things going on here that are suspicious.  One thing that really bothers me is that Greg Lewis, our county commissioner sits on the Scenic Byways commission and is a huge supporter of the group.  Someone needs to talk to Greg Lewis.  (Several members offered to speak with Commissioner Lewis.)  The way it was put to KEN was that Greg Lewis was an ardent supporter of the Scenic Byways Commission.  KEN asked if any of our other commissioners are involved.  Jonathan Robinson’s name came up as a supporter of but not in the terms of “ardent” supporter.  KEN asked who was opposed to it and was told that Doug Harris name was mentioned.  Bill Smith is in the Doug Harris camp, but unsure about Faircloth, Joyce and Comer.  KEN said we need to follow up with these guys.  KEN is going to find out from Comer what he knows about it, since  Comer lives not too far from him.  If anyone wants to talk to any of these people and find out what is going on please do so.  He will post some of the information he has on the internet with links so they can see what these organizations are about.  It sounds like there is a lot more going on here than would meet the eye.  It appears to be a way to get around the regulatory process, an under the table, below the scrutiny, and makes you wonder whether everything is on the up and up.  He spent two or three hours last night and about thirty minutes this morning trying to gather this information after Mr. Paul called him.  ERIC wanted to know if we could get this guy to come and talk to us and KEN said Mr. Paul had acted like he would like to talk with us, but he is afraid someone might throw rocks at him because of the wind mill issue.  A member said he went by the East Carteret High School several times but was ashamed to admit that he had not noticed whether the signs were down or not.  KEN said Mr. Paul had indicated to him that they were down not just because of the Scenic Byway but other problems with the signs.  The Scenic Byway was the major opposition since it hit the paper here because it was in violation of the Scenic Byway rules.  It is not really a law; it’s a – I don’t know what you would call it.  Maybe Greg Lewis knows what it is.  Those signs on the school fence were contributing somewhere around twelve thousand dollars to the school a year.  KEN said he spent quite a bit of time with Mr. Paul on the phone last night.  He was not sure how he got his number, but he did know he was a member of the TEA Party.  He may have heard him on Lockwood’s program, although he is from Raleigh.  Mr. Paul said he didn’t know if we wanted to talk with him because some people like what he does and some people don’t.  When he got to talking about windmills, KEN told him to hold on; he was getting into an area where he could get KEN upset.  Comment was made that someone had turned him in about the windmills, so maybe he was getting back with the signs.  Wayne said he understood this committee has gotten over two hundred thousand dollars to buy signs to go up along the Byway on the road from East Carteret High School to …. BOB asked ‘who was the check made out to.’  WAYNE said ‘that’s a very good question’.  Wayne said they had made a big mistake years ago when they turned it over the access of bicycles from East Carteret School to Cedar Island and got signs up saying ‘share the road’.  They did that back when the fellow that owns the Beaufort House Hotel, (He was in the legislature – Bruce Etheridge) introduced a bill to turn that into a bicycle road.  Highway 70 Down East, if you haven’t been, be very careful; because the road basically has no shoulders.  There is a regulation that DOT was supposed to go there and build a lane along side the pavement for the bicycles to ride on.  Guess what, 20 years later, it is still just like it was when he, WAYNE was in high school (and that wasn’t yesterday).  They are not going to do this modification because it would now cost probably 20 million dollars or so to add the lane from East Carteret corner to Cedar Island.  Now insult to injury this bunch of imbeciles have come up with this byway thing to promote it for even more tractor trailer loads of bicycles out there.  KEN said this consortium or ad hoc group, or what ever you want to call them love to change the zoning laws, adding restrictions on property use, and stuff like that so that area can be developed the way they want it developed.  It is pretty clear to KEN from the key words he was using that this ties into Agenda 21.  It also bothers KEN and he would like to hear what this guy Jennings (Carteret County Planning Board) has got to say, because KEN is wondering what Jennings’ agenda is.  HOWARD said Jennings is relatively new on the job.  KEN said he still would like to hear what he has to say about it.  He would like to see where he is coming from.  HOWARD said why not ask him to come and speak to us.  BOB said ERIC is going to invite him to come.  KEN said he was going to postpone his other topic for another meeting.  One more question, a member wanted to ask it when we were still on the C4 subject – how come there is no independent audit on that school board according to finances.  KEN said he could not answer that.  He did not know but it was something we ought to look at.  He thinks starting right now, the school year is just beginning, we ought to start looking into their budgeting process a lot deeper than we have in the past and ask questions; like about the buses and items like that the County Commissioners don’t seem to be able to get the answers to.  That is another issue or topic we need to discuss with Greg Lewis, because Greg Lewis, as he understands it, from a reliable source, goes down and talks with the Board of Education constantly.  He is in constant contact with them.  It is almost like that he is some sort of unofficial liaison with the Board of Education and the Board of Commissioners.  Instead of being in the role of commissioner and looking at what the school board is doing, he is more into ‘maybe’ promoting himself.  BOB said the Board of Education gets money from the state and money also from the county.  The county has no control over how they spend the money.  KEN said several members on the County Commission Board have told him that once they approve the Board of Education Budget, that the Board of Education is under no obligation to spend it as approved which makes absolutely no sense.  Why in the world would you approve something that you have no control over.  Is that a state law?  HOWARD said he didn’t think they had any choice.  Based on some recent court decisions, they will sue and some judge will rule they have to.  Just like More at Four.  Example: If I sent my four year old to pre-pre-kindergarten or whatever it is now, then actually it is nothing more than baby sitting….tax supported baby sitting.  ERIC said he has been in constant communications with Jean Preston and Pat McElraft, on the subject of the Governor issuing an order that this program go forth, ensuring the expenditure of tax dollars.  KEN said a judge has now backed up the Governor saying that we were not adequately funding preschool four year olds in the state.  HOWARD said that is Judge H. Manning and it is based on that Leandro court decision.   It looks to him like he has expanded it to wherever he wants it to go.  ERIC said he would get back to Pat and Jean.  The Governor should not be able to do it and we should not allow it.  He has posted on the web site information about this and about the need for conservative judges.  FRED said contracting out some of the school budget items might save us some money.  KEN said Contracting Out might be a good idea.  Part of their services, l
ike bus maintenance, janitorial services and things like that are partially contracted out but the greater part of them are in house; which means that the employees are employees of the school system and are therefore afforded health insurance; all the days off that everyone else gets; and their salaries come directly out of the budget, whereas a contract employee’s benefits are included in the contract.  Another question he never got an answer to was ‘why aren’t you contracting out all these positions instead of just some of them’.  A couple of the county commissioners have asked the Board of Education numerous questions that they never receive answers.  They can definitely save money by contracting out items like bus maintenance, janitorial services and cafeteria personnel.  They talk about educating the kids.  These services have nothing to do with educating the kids.  They can be contracted out.  BOB asked FRED if there weren’t three board of education members not running for reelection.  FRED said he thought so, and that is why we need to find good qualified candidates.  If we can get four good conservative members on the board, then we can probably get these items contracted out.  He thought we could do it locally.  Adele said she definitely was not going to run next time.  He is hoping to get Richard Hunt to run down there.  BOB said he understood Richard Hunt was running for office in Cape Carteret.  FRED said he was looking at three years from now.  Carr is also not running again.  HOWARD said he had threatened to run against Doug Harris, because Doug would not do like he wanted.  What has he got in mind this time?   FRED said Al Hill is just a figure head.  All he does is just sit there and just nod his head and doesn’t offer anything.  BOB wanted to know if anyone knew who was running.  FRED said we have to get someone who will stand up to the rest of the board of education.  It is too early.  The Board of Education election is not until next May.  HOWARD said ‘but it is time for us to be recruiting.’  BOB said this election in November is just the towns, mayors and city councilmen.
BOB called on EULA but she said she would come back next week.  This meeting had gone on long enough.  BOB said he was sorry; he had been putting her off for three weeks now.  She said she was mad when they called her a Terrorist and then a Thug, and then they wanted her to go H—l for eternity, she really got mad, so she had planned to tell us all about it and Maxine Waters, but we won’t find out about it until next week.

BOB then turned the floor over to ERIC.  He had been in contact with the League of Women Voters and they had notified him that there would be two events.  One will be on October 7, 6:00 pm at Community College Joslyn Hall, and the other one will be in the Cape Carteret Fire and Town Hall at 6 – 9 pm Wednesday, October 26.  There will be two different debates.  The debates will be between the mayors and also between the city councils…mostly the ones that are actually contested.  He also reported on an article he had found on the US becoming a food stamp nation.  Right now we have 46 million people on food stamps.  That is a 74% increase since 2007.  During the month of April to May there was a 1.1 million increase.  BOB said he got an email cartoon where they were trying to decide where to put Obama’s picture.  Washington is on the dollar bill, Lincoln is on the five, Jefferson on the ten, and Jackson on the twenty.  They have decided to put Obama on the food stamp since more food stamps have been printed since Obama took office.    The other thing ERIC wanted to talk to us about is, you have seen articles in the newspaper for the last couple of weeks, calling the TEA Party Terrorists, Thugs, etc, and he has talked to several people and they feel we need a response, so he has drafted a letter and he has every intention of sending this letter as a member of the TEA Party, but he would rather send it as Vice Chairman of the TEA Party because it needs to have an impact.  He read his letter to the group.
Didn’t Janet Napolitano call the veterans returning from overseas, ‘terrorists’?   This name calling was one of the first things out of her mouth.  I think we do need to address it; because the longer it goes on without rebuttal the worse it gets.  They are afraid of us; that is why they are doing it.  I also understand that there are those out there that will take it personal and react violently and maybe hurt some of us TEA Party members.  So we need to take a position that that should not be allowed.  HOWARD moved that ERIC be allowed to send his letter to the paper as the Vice Chairman of the Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots.  Motion seconded and carried.  ERNIE GUTHRIE said the guy that shot Gifford was not politically motivated.  He was just some nut case with an obsession with her for some reason.  BOB said the first reaction by the Left Wing media was to blame it on the TEA Party.  This falls under the Freedom of Speech and they are free to call us anything they want to although he didn’t feel it wise to do so if you were in a leadership position. Discussion followed on Hate Crime Laws being extended to include more that what was currently included.   ERNIE said when you start making hate crime laws you are treading on dangerous grounds.  While it may sound fine for the current event it may get twisted, turn back against us and used to their advantage.  Hate crimes are written now that if a preacher speaks out against homosexuality from the pulpit and he gets a little worked up about it; and a week later, a gay kid gets the hell beat out of him for whatever reason, it can be said that that preacher encouraged it.  ERIC said ERNIE had brought up a perfect example why this rebuttal must be done; because a preacher is viewed as a leader of a congregation, a man of respect and responsibility within a society.  Doesn’t matter if we stand back and think he is a lunatic, the people he is leading are taking what he says at heart.  You have a Vice President standing up and calling the entire TEA Party terrorists.  You have an irresponsible Democratic Chairman calling us terrorists.  He didn’t call us terrorists once; he called us terrorists several times.  Various factions have been labeled (example the Jews as vermin) which is how hate crimes get started and if they are allowed to get away with it, and you don’t stop them at the beginning, it will only get worse.  We also have to be careful what we say.  We can’t be pointing the finger at them when we are doing the same thing to them.  ERNIE said they are desperate and they know they are going to lose in 2012 and they are pulling out all the cards because they have nothing to stand on.  ERIC said ‘on two different times his house has been vandalized in the last six months.  One time was egging and the other some bags of “manure” were thrown up in the yard and on the porch.  It is probably a result of all the speeches he gave at the Commissioners meetings.  He has gone after the teacher situation because he is trying to make things better for our kids.  They don’t see it that way.  The point is, that has already happened; what can happen next?  When you have people calling you names, they are labeling us, and they are putting us up as targets.  BOB said all this he sees as the scenario for the 2012 election.  Obama and the Democrats can’t run on their record.  When he won the last election BOB predicted on that day that the very next election would be all about race.  The TEA Party has risen and ever since day one they were calling the TEA Party racists.  Now we are Terrorists, thugs, and they are trying to build that negative image in the American mind and it is a growing image.  Then they are going to bring it back to racism by the time of the election.  The 2012 election is going to be the ugliest event this nation has seen since the riots of the 60s and the civil war.  The liberal news media is going to be pushing that racist message every day and when Obama is not re-elected, I am telling you right now; the cities are going to burn that night.  Another member said ‘if Ron Paul doesn’t start getting more attention then he is going to run as a third party and that is going to put Mr. Obama right back in the White House.’  This country is in trouble and it is going to take a lot to get it squared away.  ERIC said the popularity of the TEA Party is now down to about 22 or 23% approval.  It was around 40%. The drop is partly because of this type of rhetoric and no one is standing up and fighting back.  When you tell a lie often enough, eventually people begin to believe it.

BOB said don’t forget tomorrow in New Bern at the convention center, Frank Palumbo is going to announce his candidacy in running against Walter Jones in the election.

PEGGY GARNER asked BOB about the letter ANGELA KOWALSKI had written and passed around.  We need to discuss it because it is a well written letter and should be printed.  BOB said he hoped she would come back to our next meeting so we can go over it.  Many did not have the opportunity to review it tonight.

Meeting adjourned
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary

MINUTES OF WESTERN CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING
AUGUST 16, 2011

Meeting held at Western Carteret County Community Center, Cedar Point
Meeting was called to order by KEN LANG at 7:00 pm
Pledge of Allegiance was led by WAYNE WILLIS
Invocation by DEBBIE RUCKER

KEN LANG welcomed everyone in attendance and thanked them for coming.  He explained that the Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriot group, that was organized approximately 3 years ago and meets at the Golden Corral in Morehead City, has had for many months the aspiration of establishing other TEA Party groups at each end of the county.  Hopefully, tonight culminates one of those dreams.   He explained how he had attempted to find a restaurant in which to meet where the attendees could have a meal prior to the meeting as we have in Morehead; however most restaurants, especially this time of year, are cautious about utilizing space in their restaurants that may be needed by tourists looking for a good place to eat.  He settled on the Community Center.   When he first talked to Dave, who takes care of the Center, Ken thought he would only need a small room, especially at the beginning, since he was expecting possibly 15 or 20 people to attend.  We are a little larger tonight, since the meeting in Morehead was cancelled in order for several of that group to be here to welcome everyone tonight.  While the Morehead Group meets every Tuesday night, plans are for this new group to meet the first and third Tuesdays at 7:00 pm.  Ken said he may be looking for a different meeting location later on in the year, since use of the little room in the back here, costs $10.00 and the one we are currently using is $30.00 an hour.  Dave kindly allowed us the use of this larger room tonight since we were expecting the group from Morehead to attend.  Dave set up 30 chairs for the meeting but more chairs were needed, due to the large turnout.

Ken, for those who were not familiar with the TEA Party, presented a little background.  He said he had been on the radio last night with Lockwood Phillips, and Lockwood had asked questions about the TEA Party; who and how many attended the meetings, what kind of organization it was, etc.  He had been asked tonight “Why are we not more centralized and combined with other TEA Parties.  KEN explained that he felt our strength evolved from being small groups of people and decentralized, as opposed to having some group at the top telling us what to do.  That gives us the ability to focus on local issues as well as other levels of government.  If you really want to get involved in this organization or just attend the meetings, you can still get overwhelmed with so many things going on at the state level, federal level, as well as Carteret County level.  It is a lot to focus on.  So, we are not a formal organization; we are not incorporated; not a 5013C; nor any type of organization like that.  We have talked in the past about establishing by-laws, but we rejected that.  We decided we are more effective having informal gatherings where we can discuss issues; enjoying a more relaxed atmosphere where everyone feels free to speak his opinion.  He said some of us are Republicans, more of us are Independents, and maybe some closet Democrats.  He said he did know that in the past there were some conservative Democrats, but he doesn’t know how they can find a home in the Democrat Party today.

KEN, then apologized saying he was so overwhelmed with the large turnout that he had forgotten that we usually start our meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance and Invocation.   He called on WAYNE WILLIS to lead us in the Pledge and asked DEBBIE RUCKER to give the Invocation.

KEN encouraged anyone who has not gone on our web site to please do so.  He did not want to utilize our time tonight talking about our mission, core values, etc.  They are on our web site.  But he felt it was important that we are aware of the main things we focus on:  (1) fiscal responsibility, (2) free market economy, and (3) limited government.  We are loosely under the umbrella of the national TEA Party Patriots organization.  There are several TEA Party organizations, small groups, and organizations like the Americans for Prosperity, John Locke Society, and others.  We just happen to be associated with the TEA Party Patriots.
KEN introduced the officers of the Crystal Coast TEA Party in attendance, BOB CAVANAUGH, President/Chairman, ERIC BROYLES, Vice President/Chairman, PEGGY GARNER, Secretary, and NANCY BOCK, (who is not with us tonight) Treasurer.  The funds we accrue through the sales of t-shirts, hats and miscellaneous items and donations are used for paying for our tax day rally; that is held in April every year, and this year we participated in Beaufort’s 4th of July parade.
We passed out around 1000 pocket Constitutions.  Most appreciated our providing them a copy; however there was one man who refused to take a copy, saying he wanted no part of the TEA Party’s propaganda and trash.  Ken only had one copy of the pocket Constitution with him for pass out; however, Peggy had three more that she gave to those requesting it.  Ken said he would be sure to have more at the next meeting.  He said he had other information available on the table for anyone wishing to read it.  He had several copies of the Carolina Journal and informed the audience as to how to obtain a free subscription.  He also had a few of the re-districting maps also.

KEN asked BOB CAVANAUGH to please introduce tonight’s guest speaker.  Bob said the TEA Party tries to get involved in elections, but back in 2010, it just got so cumbersome with all the primaries, and trying to vet all the candidates, that we didn’t get everything done we would like to have.  Luckily, we only have the local elections going on this year, so we have been trying to get some of the candidates for office to come down and talk to us.  Since we are kicking off a new TEA party group here in the western end of Carteret County, we have Dave Fowler, candidate for Mayor of Cape Carteret with us tonight to tell us what is in store for Cape Carteret, and how he might impact it….Or he might tell us something entirely different.

David thanked the TEA Party for inviting him tonight and promised to be brief.   He acknowledged a lot of friendly faces he recognized in the crowd here tonight, (Ken and Bob, having worked with them at the poles in the past), Debbie Rucker, Clayton Gillikin, several neighbors, and Richie Renna, candidate for Cape Carteret town board.  David said we were well represented here tonight.  Technically, we are not in Cape Carteret, but in Cedar Point, but we won’t tell anybody about that.  He said he goes a long way back with the TEA Party.  He attended the first meeting, also the big rally in Newport, and several others.  He said he had been concerned about the TEA Party recently.  Word was that it was fizzling out and could not sustain its momentum.  But then when he saw the other night on TV that John Kerry was trying to stop the media from even printing anything about the TEA Party, and also referred to the downgrade by S&P as the “TEA Party downgrade”; then he quit worrying about us.  He knew the TEA Party was here to stay.  He said he was an arch conservative, that this is where he and the TEA Party run together.  Socially, we may be different, but this country has challenges in front of it right now, economically; so we all better be on the same page, because we are all going to go down together if we are not.  I want you to know there are economic issues right here in Cape Carteret that mirror the same conditions we find in Washington, DC and Raleigh.  Believe it or not, a town like Cape Carteret has deficit spending, trouble balancing its budget, and borrowing against its future.  Mr. Fowler said he is the one person who has been vocal about that for the last few years and he is going to try to stem the tide.  The only way to do that is NEW leadership, new commissioners, and hopefully new leadership from the top.  I have been in politics about 30 years now, and my wife, Wanda, who many of you may remember is the long time principal of White Oak Elementary School, will attest that I have been in politics too long, but I plan to be in it for a while longer because I have a lot to do and a lot to say.  Hopefully, I will have a lot of people join me in this crusade to become the mayor of Cape Carteret and bring financial stability to our town, while we still have time to do that.  Any Cape Carteret voters or have friends who are, I appeal to you to help me if you can, and if you can’t, just don’t say anything bad.  I do want you to know that in the western end of this county you do have at least one friend and his name is Dave Fowler and he thanks you for allowing him to speak to you here tonight.  Thank you.
Bob said he understands that Cape Carteret is in a financial pickle; that they have been spending money like drunken sailors – $50,000.00 for a crematory to burn road kill!  The county has a crematory, why does Cape Carteret need one also.  Is there that many animals getting run over?
Bob invited Richie Renna up to speak to the audience also.  Mr. Renna said he really didn’t want to take anything away from the TEA Party but he is glad he is here.  He had always wanted to learn more about the TEA Party and get involved with it, ever since he was a Glenn Beck watcher.  He was impressed with the TEA Party marches in Washington.  He was glad the TEA Party happened.  With all the fiscal problems we have today and the people who are destroying our country; he just felt it was something really needed.  He has written letters to the editor about things that are going wrong, most importantly in Cape Carteret.  He and his wife run a restaurant on Emerald Isle and they got to know a lot of people.  That is how he met Dave.  He always made Italian food for him, parmesan; he loves it.   Dave has some great ideas and we are sort of on the same scope.  He is right; there are things in this town that need to be shaped up.  He is amazed how much character this town has.  He and his wife, Sue, live here and enjoy it. He doesn’t want to see it go in a direction that will not be good for us; like the major increases in taxes.  He thanked the TEA Party very much for allowing him to speak with the group tonight.  (Peggy gave him a copy of the pocket Constitution and he thanked her and said he would keep it with him always.)
Bob said Richard Hunt was another candidate running for town commissioner.  He is very outspoken and we probably have read several of his letters to the editor also.  Bob had tried to get him to attend tonight but he was unable, so Bob hoped to get him to one of our meetings in the near future.
Bob said he wanted to bring up that Frank Palumbo, who just retired as Chief of Police in New Bern, and had spoken to the group in Morehead a few months ago, had let Bob know that he has declared his entry into the District 3 race to challenge Walter B. Jones.  He is planning to announce his entry on the 24th of August at the convention center in New Bern.  It is going to be at 12:30 in the afternoon.  Bob plans to be there and would like to bring an army of TEA Party members with him (as many as possible) to show that Frank has some support with a big fan fare there of red TEA Party shirts.  The redistricting with Carteret and Onslow counties being chopped out, Palumbo’s chances just evaporated; however, when they again redistricted it and returned Carteret and Onslow counties to District 3, plus, where there had been 17 counties, now there are 22 counties in the District.  Frank feels that the five additional county voters do not know Jones from Frank Palumbo, so he thinks he now has a more level playing field, plus maybe an anti-incumbent advantage also.  He is hoping to get a good showing in Carteret County.  Jones has been up there 18 years, initially ran on term limits; no more than 6 terms.  He is now running for his 9th term.  Jones is not a straight down the line conservative.  Some people like him because he doesn’t vote party but votes his conscience.  Bob said he didn’t want Jones to vote his conscience; he wanted him to vote the Constitution and vote the will of the people who elected him.  Don’t forget the 24th of August, 12:30 pm, New Bern Convention Center.  If you can make it, please be there.    Anytime you get any information on campaigns, please bring it to the meetings.  If anyone at this meeting would like to help out on the campaigns, please contact the candidates and let them know.

Ken said he was sure if we had watched TV today, we had seen where a gentleman challenged Obama on Biden’s reference to the TEA Party as terrorists and Obama had denied it ever happened.  Enough reporters had reported it on the radio and TV that everyone knew what the truth was.   Ken said when he signed off on Lockwood’s radio program Monday night, he said, ‘I’m Ken Lang, member of the Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots, and I am not a terrorist”.
Bob said he was upset over Kerry demanding the news media not report on the TEA Party.  That is censorship and should never be allowed.
Ken said he had posted on the web site the article about four people in Wake County that had been found guilty of voter fraud.  The whole article was written around Governor Beverly Perdue’s veto of the Voter ID Bill.  However, having 4 people in one county should show there is a problem and is more widespread that they would have us believe.  They will need to pick up 4 Democrats to override her veto and they are going to try to do that, but whether or not they will be able to achieve that or not, is an unknown right now.  However, word is that if the Republican members can not get it passed now, they will bring it up again and keep trying until they do get it through.  He and Bob attended a Republican meeting the other night and Supreme Court Justice Newby, who had attended the meeting, pointed out that he had been invited to the Governors mansion several times, and he and all the Supreme Court justices, including the Chief Justice, had to show a photo ID to get into the mansion.  Since there is only
one Chief Justice in the State, you would think that they would know who she is (and she is a Democrat also).  There are some excellent articles, such as the above, posted on the web site that you might find interesting.

Every one has their own pet issues.  Ken and Eric’s pet issue is the board of education.  We have several people working on that.  Eric has collected a lot of budgetary information on the schools.  Nancy Bock has been working on trying to find out what the county is going to do as far as teaching the US Constitution.  There is a law that requires the Constitution be taught in all the schools in the United States during Constitution Week which is in September.  The TEA  Party has strived to get as many people to call their Board of Education and ask questions.  If you go to the TEA Party web site you will see the types of questions you should be asking.
Since North Carolina has been selected for the National Democratic Convention, and is obviously very important to Obama; he is going to be pouring tons of money and people into the state.  Someone said that the reason that voter ID was not supported by any Democrat in this state or any other state is because the Obama administration has told them they will not spend money in that state if they support that law.  Ken said he heard it was 65 million dollars to be spent in NC, so the Democrats in the Legislature and the Governor are in opposition to voter ID because they have been told by the Obama Administration ‘don’t you vote for that law, or you will not get any money’.  The Presidential election is our top priority, so whatever way you can get involved in it, you should be thinking about ways to do just that.  You can either do it as an individual or by working through particular organizations, but we need to defeat the current administration.
The next thing we need to put on our agenda is the Governor’s race.  We have to get rid of Beverly Perdue, so she can not do anymore vetoing.  If we can take some of the Democrats in the Legislature out with her, that’s even better.  The Judges election is extremely important. Right now it is 4 conservatives and 3 democrats.  We need to keep the balance at least where it currently is, however; if we can add more conservatives, it would be even better.  During the 2010 election, one of the things the Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots did was to identify those judges that were conservative.  Since there is no ‘D’, ‘I’, or ‘R’ after the judges names and most are not even known by the voting public; by the TEA Party investigating which candidates were conservative, and passing out the TEA Party’s recommendations list, it gave the voters some idea of what judges we felt would represent our convictions.  The Democrats took those ‘D’, ‘I’, and ‘R’s off because there were more Republican judges being elected and they couldn’t break through, so by taking the party affiliation off, people would look at the ballot and say ‘I don’t know any of them’ and just pick one.  Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to let people know which ones are the conservative judges.  Question was raised as to why we could not return to having the ‘D’, ‘I’, and ‘R’s put back on the ballot.  Ken said he felt the Legislature had their hands full this year, and when things calmed down a little, it probably will be returned for discussion and voting.  However, we have to get rid of Gov. Perdue or she will veto it anyway.  Tom Austin said he understood that a judge had ruled on removing the identity of affiliation, and another judge had ruled they be put back on, because the minorities did not know who was a Democrat and who was a Republican.  Understand it is still in litigation.  Best way to handle it is through the Legislature.  Eric asked those in attendance to look into the candidates and their leanings, and bring up what they determine at the meetings.  If we decide to again pass out information at the polls, this will give us more information on which to decide who to recommend.

Ken asked that anyone who can to please write letters to the editor or call in to the radio and talk with Lockwood, who is a friend of the TEA Party, and help give us a little ‘good’ publicity.  This is one of the areas where the left beats us.  Although we are doing a lot better at calling our representatives, we need a better showing on the radio and newspaper.  The Jacksonville Daily News is really open to publishing articles as well as letters to the editor.  Jacksonville is a little more stringent about the length of your editorials than the News Times, but about three months ago Ken said he wrote a really long letter on the wind energy projects and the guy from the Jacksonville paper called him and said ‘Man that’s a long article’.  Ken told him ‘Yes, but it’s pretty good, isn’t it’; and the guy said yes, so he was going to publish the whole thing.  So they will print your letters even if they are a little long sometimes.

Mrs. Jan Grube said we all need to get to know our board of elections people.  She has never called them on any problem, or asked them for any favor without their cooperation.  We can call them and ask who are running and how they are registered and they are most cooperative.  Give them a call if you have a question.  Ken asked about the extension of early voting and was told it was understood to be still on hold.  Ken said he had found it was hard to get volunteers to work the poles and if you extend the time to like a month or so, it is going to get even tougher to get people to do it.  Ken said he had worked the poles every day (except two), 8 hours a day and it is hard.  Outside is rough but it is hard inside the building also.  They do train you as to what your duties are inside at the polls, so you may decide to help out there.
Debby Rucker said we have various organizations that agree and push our ideas and agendas.  There are the Republican Women’s Group, Americans for Prosperity, TEA Party Patriots, various other TEA Party groups, Civitas, etc.  She and several others were in Raleigh when they were voting on the abortion bill and it looked like a total loss.  She was sure there was no way they were going to override that veto, but when the vote came, it turned out 70 something for the override.  It was really something to sit there and watch our representatives in action.  All these different organizations are working together and not fighting each other, but have joined together with a common goal.  We can’t be at every meeting every time, but we can spread ourselves out and get involved and be seen in different places and let them know the TEA Party is watching.  You just have to choose your places where you can go and be most effective.  She said that is why they are calling us Terrorist, because we are so involved and making such a difference.
Bob Cavanaugh said we have to be careful and stick with our core values.  We shouldn’t get involved in areas like ‘gay rights’, ‘anti-abortion’, etc.  Those are all things that will separate us.  If you want to get involved with those particular things, that is fine; go for it, but don’t try to drag the TEA Party in.  The TEA Party should stay concerned with the Constitution and our core values.
David Fowler said in regards to early voting, he received a phone call the other day and was told they were going to start early voting two weeks prior to election – from 8 to 5 weekdays, and Saturdays, 8 to 1.  Bob said wasn’t that voter fraud in Wake County during the early voting?  Bob said he understood that the person voted in the early voting and was allowed to vote again during the regular voting.
Wayne Willis said going back to the 17th of September and teaching the Constitution, he had a question – “What kind of penalty will be imposed if they do not teach the Constitution that week as the law decrees”?  Ken said ‘it’s interesting; Nancy sent out an email, and in discussion with Matt Bottoms (assistant superintendent), he basically told her that the lower grades would be taught the Constitution and went into some minor detail about what that would entail; but for the high school they didn’t plan anything special, since they teach the Constitution to those students every day.  So that’s kind of the attitude we are finding.   Wayne said he had sent an email to Matt Bottoms about the game he had originated and understood that Mr. Bottoms was hoping Wayne could get the game ready in time for the Constitution Week.  Ken said he did not get that impression from the email he had received, that he, (Matt) was open to any outside assistance.  Wayne said he would send Ken a copy of the email he had received from Matt indicating they were interested.  Ernie Guthrie said he had graduated in 2011 and for Mr. Bottoms to say they teach the Constitution every day in high school was not true.  Ken said we all know that was an untruth; that the Constitution is not taught, period, much less every day.  Tom Austin wanted to know if we planned to buy the pocket Constitutions, as we had discussed, for every student at certain grade levels.  Bob said to buy them would cost about $200 per 1000, but he had found out we could get the pocket Constitutions from our representatives.   They would give us ‘for free’ a certain number upon request.  But giving them to the students is something we have to go through the Board of Education before we can pass them out.  We can’t just go in the schools and classrooms and hand them out.  Fred said if we were interested in how they are teaching the Constitution, we could go to the schools and request we be allowed to sit in and listen to the class.  Ken said we should discuss that at our meeting next week in Morehead.  Hopefully Nancy will be there since she kinda took the lead on this program.

Tom wanted to know if there was any discussion about a trip to Washington this year.   Bob said he felt the time for demonstrations in Washington DC was past.  It is time for us to get organized here in our own state and county.  There is a possibility there could be a demonstration in Raleigh, but nothing firm to date.  Since we are not a top down organization but a bottoms-up organization it is hard to get together with the other TEA Party groups to plan big events.

Eric reminded everyone that David Horton, candidate for mayor of Morehead City, will be our guest speaker next week to present his platform; at our meeting at the Golden Corral on Tuesday, August 23.  Ken reminded everyone that the Western TEA Party would meet at the Community Center on September 6 and the TEA Party Patriots would continue their meetings at the Golden Corral.  6:00 pm at the Golden Corral and 7:00 at the Community Center.  Those meeting at the Golden Corral usually meet early to eat, so their meeting starts at 6:00.  Meeting at 7:00 at the Community Center gives, those planning to attend, a chance to eat prior to coming to the meeting.  If this does not work out for the Western TEA Party group, then it can be discussed at the next meeting.

Thrilled to see so many here tonight.  Hope you will all come back and bring your friends.
Meeting adjourned.

MINUTES OF CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
2 AUGUST 2011

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by Mayor Jerry Jones
Invocation was given by LYN BAKER
Number of Attendees – 25

New Attendees – Gene & Kathy Crain (2nd visit); Larry Shock (attended about 6 months ago);
Julie Purdy (here once before) and Kelly Gordon and Angela Murphy (who
came in late).

Bob read a portion of an email from the TEA Party Patriots in regards to just before the House vote:
President Obama promised to bring change in 2008; the Republican Party promised change in 2010. Even with all the talk about change, lower taxes, raising taxes, etc., things haven’t changed enough, we still see politicians waiting until the last minute to address the problems; two or three politicians wheeling and dealing behind closed doors; passing legislation no one has had time to read; possible down grade in our AAA credit rating, massive out of control spending, and the spiraling unsustainable debt. They are trying to sell us a deal, which means we will be 23 trillion in debt in a few years instead of 26 trillion. They are saying the projected amount will be a little less than they thought. That’s not cutting spending, it’s just a failure of leadership and they are trying to blame us, the TEA Party, for it. While politicians get away with this, the TEA Party is getting blamed. Probably right now the only ones with any courage is the TEA Party who is willing to fight for the future of our country. So no matter how much they throw at us, we will stand firm because we don’t do this for us, we do it for our country.

BOB asked if anyone has any comments about the events of the past couple of days. Does anyone like that we got our debt ceiling raised? HOWARD GARNER said he was not convinced that it was going to hold – that there were too many loopholes and wiggle room. ERNIE GUTHRIE said he thought the stock market had said it all today when it didn’t rally back. Business people understand two things – making a profit and when the profit isn’t there, you make the cuts. Tough choices – you look at the interest on what they are borrowing and the ten years it is going to take us to cut that trillion dollars is going to cost a lot more. BOB said he was really proud of the TEA Party elected officials that stood firm in the House. A lot of them voted against this bill although a bunch of them did vote with it. He was really surprised at all the talking heads on TV and radio – they were all capitulating that we should take the chips off the table, put them in our pocket, and call it a win. Someone else said they thought this was because we got ‘no taxes increase’. BOB said well, according to the bill, it removes the Bush taxes in January, so that is an increase in taxes. A member said he thought they were saying ‘the big picture is the next election’ and we have to continue what we are doing – we just have to get better at it – and we have a lot of Republicans we have to work on and/or replace and hopefully in 2012 we can get rid of this President and only then may we have a chance; but we have slowed things down. PEGGY GARNER said, ‘but we gave Obama the time to get pass the next election’. BOB said that was one of the things he did not like. He would like to have this whole debt ceiling thing on the ballot next year to be a part of the election cycle. HOWARD said many of them in Washington think ‘most of us peons do not know what is going on’. BOB said, ‘true and half of those peons don’t care since they do not pay any taxes. You have all heard the statistic where the top 1% pays 30% of the taxes, top 3% pay, and all that and yet Obama says ‘it is time for the millionaires and billionaires to put some skin in the game’. BOB feels these people have already put in a lot of skin and more besides. PEGGY said ‘we need a flat tax where everybody pays’. BOB said maybe one way the Republicans can come back on this tax the rich thing is to call it the ‘Oprah Winfrey tax’ – that the Democrats want to tax Oprah and take her money. Several said that might help. BOB said the Democrats have created this image of people with wealth are all the old ‘cigar smoking, balding business guys. They don’t want you to think about all the people you see on TV, the movie stars, professional athletes, the Oprah Winfrey’s, the guy that owns the black entertainment network, etc. LYN BAKER said ‘people who earn their own business through hard work, where is the incentive now to continue’? BOB said he was talking to a friend this week that runs a large wrecker service here in the county. He recently cut his employees down to the bare bones because he doesn’t know what is coming down the pike, and is worried about what the health care thing is going to do to him. There are all kinds of regulations that are in the works as a result of this financial restructuring bill, plus the Obamacare thing. There is just so much out there being thrown at you that you are afraid to go out and buy new equipment, do any modernizing, or hire additional help. You can’t depend on anything being restructured, rescinded or even helping with a write-off. We don’t have any confidence in the Government. We are concerned that the Government is going to some how come up with other ways to increase revenue. HOWARD said one reason business is down for the wrecker service is the number of wrecks that have apparently dropped somewhat. Example: In the last submitted report Wild Wood Rescue Squad’s calls were down significantly for the last quarter. BOB said that is also a product of the higher cost of gasoline; and also possibly because we have had dry roads for the whole spring and summer, so people haven’t been sliding off the road into the ditch or each other.
ERIC BROYLES said he has not seen anything on the 9-12 this year. He wonders if they are going to do something on the balanced budget. BOB said there were rumblings from the TEA Party Patriots about coming up with something on what we are going to do this year about 9-11 or 9-12’. Nothing firm yet. BOB personally thinks that the time for getting on the bus and going to DC is past. Now is the time to get involved in the local neighborhoods and working on your neighbors, trying to gin up the votes. We need to maximize as many votes as possible. This is very important, especially during the primary season. The primaries are usually in the middle of May and the voter turnout in Carteret County for the primary is just abysmal; so when election time comes they are all going ‘where did all these yahoos come from and how did they get on the ballot?’…a choice between two devils. We need to somehow crank up the voter interest in the primary so they will be better informed on election day.
BOB reported that KEN LANG is not here tonight, due to setting off the fireworks for the Jacksonville Night Out. The Western Carteret TEA Party organization that originally was scheduled for tonight has been postponed until Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at the Cape Carteret Community Building. BOB asked, ‘In order to help kick that organization off and also meet some of our “down-west” potential members, would you all like to move our meeting for that night to Cape Carteret. Just for that one meeting to help get the group started?’ He said he realized that everyone here cannot make it, since some live all the way down east and that is quite a journey from one end of the county to the other. PEGGY was asked to put the change of venue into the minutes and spread the word that we will meet on August 16 at the community center in Cape Carteret, in lieu of Golden Corral in Morehead City. Question on how to get to the Community Center…Bob said easiest way is to just go through the traffic light at Cape Carteret like you were going to Swansboro, and just beyond the traffic light is a BB&T Bank on the right. There is a little road next to the bank. Just follow it back to the Center which will be on the left. Discussion of time of meeting. BOB said he thought it was 6:00 but PEGGY said Ken had said at our July 29 meeting that they were thinking about 7:00. BOB said we’ll check it out and let everyone know. This is not a restaurant, so those of us who normally eat before our meetings, need to either eat prior to attending or bring a snack and drink.
HOWARD said we had found out what the Board of Education was doing when it was discovered by the County Commissioners that a 5 million surplus had been found hidden in our Carteret school system budget. He said it was happening all over the state. Gilford County had 10 million hid, and Charlotte/Mecklenburg had pulled the same stunt but their commissioners had not found it out until after they had approved the budget – so as he has stated before, they are all trained by the same group and singing from the same song book.
BOB wanted to know, since he was absent last week, if PAT and JIM NALITZ had made a report on their findings on number of teachers in the schools. PEGGY said “apparently you didn’t read last week’s minutes. Their complete report was in them.” HOWARD said he found some discrepancies (not in PAT and JIM’s report) but in what had been reported to him by a lady Tabbie Nance had referred him to. She had said they did not have any Ag Teachers in middle schools, but the web site for the schools (that PAT and JIM had looked into) showed they did have. So who do you believe?
BOB said he hated to keep jumping around on topics, but we had talked in the past about candidates for public office coming to our meetings and talking to us so we could ask them questions. Since we started out as the Morehead City TEA Party before we changed our name to Crystal Coast, we had decided to ask the Mayor of Morehead to come and speak to us first and he has graciously accepted. He will be challenged in the upcoming primary by David Horton, a current city council member. Mr. Horton has spoken to us before about the O’Neill park, but he will come back later in August (16th had been originally proposed but there will be a conflict in dates since we are planning to go to Cape Carteret that night.) Eric said he would contact Mr. Horton and arrange another date.
BOB introduced Mayor Jerry Jones and turned the floor over to him.
Mayor Jones said he was enjoying our comments and discussions. He told us he has been mayor of Morehead city for 12 years and is seeking another term as mayor. BOB jokingly referred to term limits. Mayor Jones said, well, yes and no. If you were being paid a great salary, but for someone who volunteers their time to civic organizations, and is doing a very good job, I think they should be able to carry on. BOB asked Mayor Jones how much he was paid as Mayor. Mayor Jones said $400.00 per month, or about $350 or so after taxes. He said he was going to give a brief presentation and then open the floor up for questions. He felt that we would better understand his platform with that type of format. He has taken a lot of notice of the TEA Party. The TEA Party effort is doing wonders throughout the country. He thinks it was time to slow things down a little bit; make people stop and think about what is going on and just regroup. He knows that ERIC is Vice President of this organization, but is also very active in the local government in Morehead City and throughout the county. ERIC has included him on his email list and the mayor appreciated that because it kept him updated on what was going on. But just to talk about him and his philosophy, ideology, will give us a better idea about our local government. He still feels he is doing a good job as mayor. First of all, local government, or all government begins at home. Local government is where we can really get involved. By getting involved in the local level, we can them move up to the state and federal level. I jokingly tell people all the time, ‘if you want to see good government, look at local government; if you want to see bad government, look at state; and if you want to see out of control government, look at the federal government.’ It is out of control right now. Some of this out of control is on the debt ceiling. We have some issues on term limits, and stuff like that, that we really need to address. Until we can take all the benefit packages out of our career politicians and that level, it is going to be hard to do.
He was born in Morehead City. He told HOWARD he understood he was born in Newport. HOWARD said yes, downtown Newport, before it moved up the street. The Mayor said Newport has changed a lot, just like Morehead. Growing up in Morehead City, times have changed. Things change fast. You never want to lose sight of, don’t ever forget where you came from. He thinks that is the philosophy of our country and our families, and our local governments. Never, ever forget where you came from. If you don’t know where you came from, how do you know where you are going? It wasn’t that long ago, growing up in Morehead City, we didn’t have a sewer treatment plant. We didn’t get one until 1966 and before that time; on the falling tide, that’s when the sewer got emptied into Bogue Sound. He said he jokingly tells everyone that is when he learned to do the breast stroke. We can all relate to those types of stories, but times do change and change is usually good. It is a moving target. We have to be diligent, aware of that target, because we do not want to forget our roots and forget where we came from. We live in Carteret County for a reason, and that is the quality of life here. I tell my wife all the time; she wants to complain about every time we want to fly somewhere, we have to go out the county, drive to New Bern, fly out and puddle jump to Charlotte, and get another plane to go somewhere else; so I remind her, yep, on the flip side it is hard to get here. And that is the life style we like in Carteret County. At the local level, that is what the mayor strives to do. He does like to remind people although each municipality has it’s own governing body and Carteret County has it’s own governing body…they really are not the governing body, the people are the governing body. The citizens are the governing body. These are the people we grow up with, work with, our kids go to school with, go to church with. We have a vested interest in this community and yes, while I do get paid a little bit of money that helps with reimbursements, I can’t retire off of that, believe you me. To me, there is a passion about Morehead City, and just growing up here, really wanting to maintain this small town feel. I also recognize that you can’t just stand still. If you don’t move forward, you are going to fall backwards. One of our neighboring communities, refused to look forward, and that town is paying for that now. Yes, I am talking about Beaufort. They are struggling to even get a water system or sewer system over there. That is something that we have strived for here in Morehead City, to stay ahead of that curve. Engineers call it a 15 or 20 year plan. I call it a 30 year plan. I am always looking at the long term plan for this. I want to make sure that I leave my children, your children, the least amount of worries as I can about the finances of our community. A municipality’s primary duty and responsibility is health, safety and welfare of our citizens. The purpose of a municipality is to provide a higher level of service. That is why we choose to live in cities. We have a responsibility not to go overboard, and don’t forget we live here and pay the same taxes as everybody else, but sometimes it is easy to get caught up in this whirlwind and because we are volunteers, working with you, going to church with you, we also have other jobs and we just want to give back to our community, so it’s difficult sometimes. It is a big responsibility. I don’t want to pay more taxes than anybody else, but I also recognize that by living in a municipality I expect a higher level of service. And I expect when I call for police protection, I don’t want to hear the sheriff is 30 or so miles away. I want a quicker response time than that. Same thing with the fire department. When I turn on my water spigot I want to be sure I have good clean water coming out. I don’t want to have to worry about that. Right now our well water around here, once you get the initial approval from the health department you do not have to get any more water tested. You do not know what is in that water, but in the municipality we have a little over 100 tests that we do and the water monthly to make sure it stays clean. Our garbage cleanup – I will admit it is a whole lot better than it was when I was growing up – a lot cleaner, but that’s not because of the actual city itself, it is because of the citizens themselves. We are more aware now of our health and cleanliness, so we are more attentive to that. Another thing, and we hit on this hard, talking about the PCS thing that almost snuck in on us here, is that we protect our citizens by zoning. We create these zones for land use where you can live in comfort with your family, and not have to worry about an industry going right next door to you. That was kind of the issue we had going on down there on the water front. That was my initial problem, when I heard about it. I had heard back about 6 months or so that PCS was going to expand their facility, but that didn’t raise a bell for me, alarm or anything. They are down there now and just expanding their facility. Well, early in June I heard they were building a sulfur melting facility. That did raise a flag and that is about the same time everybody started hearing about it. We came together as a community and did what we had to do to protect our health, safety and welfare. But it is a moving target and we are not over it yet. I met with TV people today and they questioned about the zoning – are we going to change it? The answer is ‘we are going to look at it’. We are going to have to be very careful about that too, because you can’t just spot zone somewhere. When you zone something it impacts on all the zoning districts. You don’t want to be knee jerking on that and hurt somebody else in the process. We provide park services, places for people to gather for community services or play sports. Morehead City has done well, and done well without having to raise taxes over these years. In fact, we have reduced. That’s a good number too, not having raised taxes. You can raise the tax rate without raising taxes. The tax is how much you write that check for. That is what I am mindful of. Somebody that has a 20 cent tax rate and now has a 28 cent tax rate; actually could be paying less tax. I know I am. It’s not much; maybe 30 or 40 dollars a year but it is still less, so you know you don’t want to get blindsided by that either. But the mayor, and talking about me, that is the reason I’m telling all these stories is so you can get to know me and why I feel I am not finished yet as mayor. There is continuity here. I had the mayor of Atlantic Beach call me up the other day and wanted me to try and get one of his commissioners to run for reelection.
I’m not saying everything is great – we need to quit all the wasteful spending and bring jobs back to America but there is money out there that if you don’t get for your community, someone else is going to get for theirs. So there is no need to get ridiculous about it and not go after it. If you have continuity in your organization and, things do not happen in a year or two years, some can take up to 10 years or longer to happen. These agencies look at that and that is why Morehead City has been so successful in obtaining a lot of assistance from federal and state agencies. We haven’t had to spend our local tax dollars. Another thing the number one thing that a mayor does is he is the public relations person. He is the one that sells his community. He is the one that makes people feel comfortable and want to come live in that
municipality. It is his job to set the tone – and I don’t mean burden – it depends on his personality that sets the type of tone for that community. You have been to some boards where you have seen unruly meetings where they get out of control. When that happens you can’t make responsible decisions – you make knee jerk decisions – you make mad decisions – or you walk away and don’t make any decisions. Under these circumstances, it will not be good for the community. So you want to maintain that calmness, and get better results from your governing board.
That’s my job. I feel that when you come to our city council meetings and you are sitting out there, you are looking at a business, at a board of directors, and you want us to act like professionals. You want us to understand that we are spending your money, your investment, and want to be aware of what we are doing with it. And I want to know what we are doing with it as well. I want you to know what we are doing with it. That is another big roll for a mayor is to have that personality; that trust between the council members, and the community. It is a trusting relationship. The mayor’s position is an honorable position. It is a very integral position and an honest position. It is not a gray area. If you know me I am not a gray person, I’m either black or white. You will know where I stand at, but I am not always firm on that stance. New information could move me over a little bit, but you will know where I am standing. I will not be on the fence teetering one way or the other, so that you walk away feeling uncomfortable about your leadership and investment. This is my passion. I wish I could make a living doing it, but I owe too many bills. When I first got elected, 12 years ago, I had help. I don’t know if any of you remember Mayor Horton, who was well respected in the community, and I tried to follow in his leadership style. I grew up with Bud Dixon. Bud did a lot for Carteret County. Before I close I would like to reiterate that this is why it is so important that you have continuity. We, in Morehead City, governed about 26 to 28 thousand people. That is almost half the population of Carteret County, so you are influenced even though you may not be in our ETJ. What we do affects everybody in the county. We try to balance our residential areas. I want you to feel safe at home. We do have to have our business districts. We want to be able to buy things, but just as important –we want them to come in and pay a lot of taxes, so they can keep our taxes low – and that is why we have designated this place out west of Morehead to be our shopping center and I don’t want them to get much closer into our residential area.
In closing, I am reminded about a lot of wisdom from a lot of people over the years, and three terms of advice that have been given to me are (one from Ms Geri Femia) (1) hold everybody up to the highest esteem (2) never, ever forget your roots. (3) Love your people and they will love you back. You may not live in Morehead City and be able to vote for me, but you probably know someone who does. If I could ask you to do that, I would appreciate it. Now I’ll open up for questions.

BOB asked when was the election – November 6th ? Mayor answered it is the first Tuesday in November. It is not a primary, but a general election.
BOB asked how many town council members are up for election? Answer – Paul Cordova who is our tenured council member has filled for reelection. David Horton, who has vacated his position to run for mayor and John Nelson has retired.
BOB – What is the city manager’s job in relation to everything? Answer – Randy Martin, our city manager, makes about a $100,000.00 a year, plus benefits. (Probably around $110 to $115). In the US there are two types of mayors. You have your strong mayor system and your weak mayor system. In NC they are all weak mayors. The strong mayor system is what you find in the large cities, like NY City, where the mayor has veto power. He is able to appoint department heads, committees, and has a lot of control. In North Carolina we have the weak mayor system and the weak mayor system is that the mayor doesn’t have that veto system, doesn’t hire or fire, and doesn’t appoint committees, by himself. He works with his council. There are two types of government there also. You have the mayor/council form of government and the council/manager form of government. The manager works at the pleasure of the council. The council hires the manager to run the city. Back in the old days the mayor ran the city. If your roof springs a leak, you call a roofer; if your city has a problem you call the city manager. Randy works at the pleasure of the board. He does not answer to one or two on the board, he answers to the whole board. He is very influential, but that is what he is hired to be.
BOB – How long has Randy been town manager? Answer – He’s been in Morehead City about 15 or 16 years.
ERIC – Thought the town manager reported to the mayor and participated in council meetings. He does the general day to day management? So the mayor can’t say ‘Hey, Randy, I would like you to look at this and get back to me.’ Answer – In a working relationship, yes, he does answer to me as the mayor, and I can tell him to do something and he should do that, but the mayor does not have the authority by himself to really order him around. The council can, but just day to day routine and I say Randy, I would like you to do this, or that; yes, he will do that.
ERIC – So in reality you are in the chain of command for him. Answer – Yes, I represent the council and am the chief executive officer of the town. But I can’t fire Randy. That would have to be a majority of the board decision.
Questions, remarks, and answers were made on the O’Neill Park; most of which have been covered in previous meetings.
BOB brought up the subject of the PCS situation. How in the world could all the officials, town council members, even county commissioners, not know what was going on. Now they are all sitting around going like this (fingers pointed away from each other), while shrugging their shoulders. How could they not possibly not known what was going down the pike. The innuendo appears that someone was on the take. He said the mayor had said it kinda got sprung on them the first part of June and he had read in the paper that the mayor was going to do something that would ensure this type of thing never happened again. Answer – Yeah, you are right, those doing the finger pointing thing are not leaders. You will never see me do that. Morehead City policy is when environmental permits come in; it is handled at the staff level, planning level. All they are doing is reviewing and ensuring it meets city ordinances before it goes out. This is the current policy. I did not write that. It has never been a problem before, but apparently we have a problem now. That is what we are going to review, so we won’t have the same problem again. Yes, there was some verbage in there that said melting facility, but it did not raise a flag, even though it probably should have. As far as that department, they did nothing wrong. They were just following policy. I can not blame any of them for that.
ERIC said he had talked to the second in command and he said the air quality control assessments had gone out to everyone, including New Bern, the latter part of December and there was a comment period that all the government agencies involved had until January 31 to respond. He knows it was received by Morehead City. It landed on someone’s desk, whether they had the ability to review it or not, communications broke down at that point. How did it get all the way to June, when only one more permit was required before anyone became aware of what was happening. Mayor said he did not know if it was a communications breakdown or just a bad policy. If he had been looking at that assessment, he would not just be looking at the air quality, but also the zoning. He lives in down town Morehead and he does not want a smoke stack down there. Talking about a 95 million dollar (offensive) facility right here, you have a yacht basin there, and if you build that facility, where are they going to go. You know they are not going to stay there. They are going to move out, so what have we gained. Not a net gain, but a net loss, so that is what he would be looking at from a tax base and job maker.
PCS said they were going to create 18 jobs, but 13 were already existing. If you are going to build a $95 million facility, I don’t think 185,000 dollars is going to make or break that project. That is how much money they were talking about receiving from NC Commerce. To receive that $185,000.00, Carteret County had to match $90,000.00 of it. So everybody was sworn to secrecy. I did not know this as Mayor of Morehead City. I found out about this on June 7 as President of the Economic Council. My director came to me and said Jerry, I’ve got to tell you something. I know I signed a confidentiality paper, but I have to show you something. Even our board didn’t know it, because our director had signed it. The Executive Board met and said ‘No, this is not going to happen.’ Since then we have changed our EDC policy. Keep in mind we have a brand new director. I’m not throwing him under the bus either, and he, the mayor, was new to the board also. Now, any member of the EDC board can sign a copy of confidentiality agreement and if he does he can disclose it to the rest of the board. Mayor Jones said he found out about it as President of EDC before being told as mayor what exactly was going on down there. Expanding the facility, putting more docks in didn’t mean anything to him. ERIC said it was his understanding that since all this had come about the matter was now going to be put to rest. The mayor said yes, but not to mislead anyone, the Morehead City council had known about the expansion a long time, but did not know about the sulfur melting until recently.
ERIC said ‘in his speech to the City Council on May 10, 2011, I raised the concerns that our city government has a prioritization and spending problem in the allocated use of taxpayer’s money. Since the latter part of 2007, when the economy started its downward spiral into a deep recession, Morehead City spent over $10 million dollars on projects that was not critical to the operations of the city. The projects that the money was spent on was $1.3 million for the JIB property; $6 million on a new police and EMS station; $1.2 million above the original $1.2 million on the O’Neill field, and $1.2 million on two boat ramps. This does not factor in the ongoing operational or maintenance costs for these projects or the High School building that was purchased on Bridges Street for $1 million that is currently underutilized. How does all this type of spending, especially during a recession, fit into the world of things concerning one of the primary principles of the TEA Party which is fiscal responsibility? That’s the first question.
Would it not have been wiser to apply these funds towards the outstanding debts owed by Morehead City, NC (i.e. the Water Treatment Plant)? What can you say that would make these folks here believe that your future policies and recommendations to the City Council will be of a sound nature and fiscally responsible?
Mayor Jones said he would answer that in three parts: The Jib Property in downtown Morehead. Morehead is synonymous with its water front. Without its waterfront you will lose a lot of tourists spending money there. And the Big Rock, which is a private organization, has over a ½ million dollars in this project. And that is just the beginning of it. It is not all on the tax payers, but we are looking at the bigger picture of revitalizing down town Morehead to actually help the taxpayers. When our guests come in and spend money it keeps our tax burden down. On the police department, as I previously stated I look at the 50 year plan, and this is the first police department ever built. Previously it was in the old municipal building on A Street, and they did put a jail cell in there but that has been there since we had 4 or 5 policemen and now we have 30 + policemen. It was time. Not being a wealthy person, I tell this story about when he bought a new boat and someone asked how much it had cost. He told them $250.00 a month. He said no, he wanted to know how much it cost. I asked him why, did he have $14,000.00 to buy it. I don’t so it costs me $250.00 a month. To me that is part of budgeting. We have a debt service that we have allocated X amount of dollars per month or annually; however we pay them back. This police department was presented as a net savings (I would have to check to get the amount for you). Out of the $6 million building the county owns $2 million of it. They put the 9-11 center up there. Since they have done that, we have, and luckily the Morehead City police department they also hired MC dispatcher. They had to apply for the position. They got hired in there along with some others. So we don’t pay for dispatchers any more. So the savings of the salaries and benefits also offset the costs of that building. I feel like it was a good fiscal plan.
ERIC said but was not the building on Bridges Street purchased to be the next police station?
Mayor Jones said actually it is supposed to be the next administrative building for Carteret County. That is their plan. They are going to renovate ½ and MC is going to renovate the other ½. We sold the property. That was kind of a flip, for property that was down on Sunset Drive on the water that we sold for 1.6 million dollars and we used that to buy the Bridges Street building. He thought that was a good deal.
ERIC asked what Morehead City’s current debt service was. Mayor said well, the Water Treatment Building is about $16 million, so would guess somewhere around $25 million.
ERIC said he understood the city employees had not had an increase in pay in several years. You know when you walk into the grocery store what is happening to the prices, so he feels it imperative that the city take care of these employees.
ERIC said as you know the TEA Party’s core values are Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Government, and Free Markets. As mayor how do you expect to achieve these values in the next 2 years if reelected? Fiscal Responsibility – The mayor said he feels they do that. He feels that if anything happens to him tomorrow, he is confident that he has set the stage for future generations where they will be OK in MC. He only sees Operational Spending, and no more Capital Spending. He does not see any further capital projects coming on line in the near future. Limited Government – Do not take to the extreme but maintain balance. Rumor is going around that they are going to raise taxes. He said they will remain revenue neutral and that means they will not take in any more than they did last year. It was 28.3 cents and they did it for 28.5 cents. It is not like they went above revenue neutral, not with 14/100s of a penny. It is not devastating by any means. We do operate under a balanced budget. We are mandated to. We’re not like the federal government, we can’t just print more money. Free Market Capitalism – In the past few years we have increased the number of businesses here. Is there anything new coming down the road that you know of. Morehead City (Carteret County) has the highest retail sales in any city in NC. It is not because of the locals in Carteret County. It is because all these people that come through Carteret County spend money here. And for those of us who grew up here we know how much better off we are. I remember the days when Labor Day came around and everybody went back home, we rolled up the streets. It was a tough time to make a living back then. Carteret County is a little more buffered than most counties because these people come here and spend their money. HOWARD said we also have Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune. The mayor said he hated to hear about those F18’s that we lost to Calif. HOWARD said NC had a lot to do with us losing those planes. When the government was denied the chance to have an outlying landing field for these planes, it was obvious to him we would lose them and we did. This landing field was necessary, and NC didn’t want it in their back yard. If we here in Carteret had helped them get this OLF, we might could have gotten those squadrons. HOWARD said you talk about the tourists spending their money in MC, where do you think Newport citizens spend their money? If MC would get a Sam’s, then you would get all of our money. MC gets a whole lot of sales tax money, also. You would be amazed how much these little fire departments in the outlying towns, get in sales tax money. The mayor said in MC alone, they get 28 million a year in liquor sales. HOWARD said he did not buy his liquor in MC.
ERIC asked what set him apart from his opponent. Why did he think he was better to serve as mayor than Councilman David Horton. Mayor Jones said he felt one of his qualities is ‘team building’. He learned a long time ago that you can’t achieve anything by yourself. You have to have the trust of those you are working with. That is a very strong suit of mine. I strongly feel that it’s not always about the money. The money is very, very important, but it is not always about the money. You have to balance that out too. When you are providing public services, you have to look at that service and sometimes it comes at a cost. If it was all about the money we could just get rid of it all completely. I think the position of the mayor is a very humble position. You need to maintain that and be respected. It needs to be one of integrity. It doesn’t need to be confrontational and when people come to Carteret County and MC, they need to be made to feel welcome here. One philosophy of mine is ‘my door is always open’ and I am for anything until proven differently. Some people’s door is shut until you force them to open it. As far as business ability, I think it is tit for tat on that one. We are both business owners.
CLAYTON GILLIKIN asked if the mayor knew what percentage of local people, that have been here for over 50 or 60 years compared to the outsiders moving in (sometimes referred to as ding batters or dit dotters. The mayor said there is a difference. The ding batters come for a visit and the dit dotters come and stay. Which is Clayton referring to? The mayor said he could tell about MC (which kind of balances with Carteret County). About 40% of home owners here are absentee home owners. That is a big positive. That’s 40% that is paying taxes and getting part-time services. CLAYTON said in other words about 60% were born and raised here. Yeah. The mayor said he left the area and went to college, and things didn’t work out for him back then, and for financial reasons, plus that is where he wanted to be. When he go to evaluating and was looking for ways to make it work out, and deciding where he wanted to live, which was Carteret County, so he chose to come back here and started his own business, and has been doing it for 30 some years. A lot of his school mates left the area and went elsewhere because they couldn’t make a living here…and there is still not a lot of potential today, but it is better than it used to be. What are these old friends doing now? They are coming back and they are buying investment property, but they are ultimately buying their retirement home. This might not be the greatest place to make a living but it is the greatest place in the world to raise your family, or retire to. A lot of people who were born here are coming back.
Question – As mayor, what do you find to be your biggest challenge as far as motivating your council and community…getting them to follow where you want to go? Mayor asked, do you mean in general or specific? General. Mayor said his biggest challenge is juggling his mayor’s job, his family, and his business. You can’t afford to just be mayor unless you are retired or wealthy and I am neither. I am MC first working mayor. Every mayor before me was retired. The first thing you have to do is tell people what you are going to do and do it. Once said, they know what to expect. I structure so many hours a week for mayor duties. I am at city hall every day from 10 to 11 o’clock (exceptions to every rule). Now everyone knows if they want to talk to the mayor they have to come between 10 and 11 o’clock. That has been one of my biggest challenges is juggling my personal life with my business and mayoral life. Evidently it is working. People are not dumb. They know when someone is just there for personal reasons. They can see right through them. Someone once said there is nothing more sincere than the heart of a volunteer. I think people see that in me and realize it is not for any personal gain. It is because I love my community and want to continue working with the public.
ERIC asked if he considered himself a fiscal conservative. Mayor said ‘I was raised a Democrat and one of the things we had to do at the school I attended on finances was to declare a party. You had to do that before you graduated political leadership. When he mentioned this to his dad, he was told ‘what’s to decide – you’re a Democrat’. Growing up in Carteret County, most of us understood that back then. Things have changed now. One day his professor came up to him and asked what he had decided he was. He guessed he was embarrassed to say he wasn’t a Democrat. He said he had kinda made up his mind and he thought he was leaning toward Republican. He said what’s the problem – it’s quite obvious. He was just waiting for Jerry Jones to say that. He told Jones that he was a moderate conservative. You have a balance. When he was president of the League of Municipalities, he was told the same thing. He thinks that is where he has a good cross over with people, but he is definitely on the conservative side. I would like to say this in answer to the question, I understand partisan support to get elected somewhere. I don’t think you should elect someone just because of what part they are in. I think you should support them for their beliefs, their ideology, and for what they stand for, but I also believe once you are elected, you need to take that party hat off and serve all the people.
BOB asked if anyone else had a question. Last chance to beat up on a living, breathing mayor. BOB thanked Mayor Jerry Jones for coming tonight and told him he was welcome to sit here and listen. We are going to go on a little bit longer.

BOB told about his coming to Carteret County from New Jersey, fresh out of boot camp, and thinking ‘the Marine Corps had to look long and hard to find such a remote place’. He remembers standing in line at the grocery store and the cashier and the lady ahead of him were just chit chatting away. BOB was getting a little antsy wanting to get his pack of cigarettes and get out of there. Finally the lady at the register turned around to him and said very calmly, “Sonny, just take it easy, I’ll get to you”. It took him about 4 years to get New Jersey out of him to where he could finally just sit back and relax and enjoy the tranquility of the area. His hobby all through school, the Marine Corps and to this day, was collecting butterflies and the woods and fields of NC were just a butterfly paradise. I stayed here in this area when I got out of the Marine Corps, because this area reminded me of the coast of New Jersey where he grew up back in the 60’s. In 1992 he went back to NJ to attend a funeral of a nephew who had accidentally shot himself (playing Wyatt Earp), and decided to take his wife through the hood where he grew up. When he was there it was a rural area, with small strip malls, farm fields. Now he had no idea where he even was. It had totally changed, endless strip malls and subdivisions. The boundaries between towns were totally erased. You couldn’t tell when you left one town and entered another. It was so depressing. It brought a tear to my eye; what happened to my world. It only survives in my memory anymore. I hope Morehead City and Carteret County will be somehow be able to hang on to its ambiance, its character, so that 50 years down the road when some of our kids come back here, they won’t be saying ‘My God, what happened to my world?’ That is what BOB wants to pass on – keep Morehead Morehead and don’t let it turn into another Myrtle Beach, SC. ERIC said like maybe Harkers Island. BOB said even Harkers Island has changed drastically. Have you seen all those big fancy homes there now? Several other changes to the area in recent years were mentioned.

FRED DECKER said there was a piece in the paper today about Pat (McElraft) and Jean (Preston) about the award they won. (being conservative) It is the second year they have won this prestigious award. They explained their campaign support (campaign contributions) quickly. HOWARD said it is on the front page of the Jacksonville paper, an excellent article. Be sure to read it. Fred said that she had received a 39 cent donation and she had included it.

HOWARD told BOB ‘speaking about when you first came here, Peggy worked in payroll at Cherry Point in 1954. They paid the marines in cash. Those marines when they came here, were constantly cussing about why would anyone want to live in this God forsaken place. A lot of them, if they are still alive, are still around here. You couldn’t run them off. PEGGY said she would get so angry at the way they talked about her home here on the coast.

BOB recognized a couple of ladies that had arrived late. They were Kelly Gordon and Angela Murphy. BOB invited them to come back. They live in Craven County (Havelock). Both their husbands are marines.

RUTH PARKER reminded BOB that we had made arrangements to meet on August 16 in Cape Carteret, and hadn’t we invited Mr. Horton to come and speak with us. BOB asked ERIC to please contact Mr. Horton and try to arrange another date.

ERIC held up a small cup (usually used for pills in the hospital) with a small pill in it, and said, We have all heard about Cut, Cap, and Balance and all the arguments surrounding it. Well, he and his wife had had an argument last night and this was his cut, cap, and balance ‘ his supper’. She used to be a Democrat but is now a “fiscal” conservative. He is thinking about getting her to go back to being a Democrat. This is what you call deficit spending.

With that, BOB adjourned the meeting at 7:00 pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary