Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC

Meeting called to order at 6:05pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH

Pledge of Allegiance led by HOWARD GARNER

Invocation by PACE WINSTEAD

Number of attendees – 24

MARLIN PARK ERIC BROYLES reported on his findings to date on the park as discussed at the last meeting. He had met with Mayor Jerry Jones. Still Morehead only receiving $500 per game. All income, fence signs, concession stands, etc. will go to Riverfront Sports. Beer is back on the agenda. It will be sold at the park during the games. The Morehead group for the park is considering purchasing the land next to the park for extension. $275 thousand more than originally planned was spent on sewage due to changes in sewage rulings. The $900 thousand originally planned for the park has now exceeded $2.5 million. The concensus is that the park will be used only for a special (sports) clientele. KEN LANG said he understood that New Bern had done a ‘Cost Analysis’ and had found having a park in New Bern would be too costly and had turned down the Riverfront Sports group for building in New Bern. He thought this analysis would/should be available for Morehead’s review. It was ERIC’s understanding that no State or County money was involved, but he would check it out. The original park idea was for local boys Babe Ruth teams but had been expanded. Did not feel that this was an appropriate use of tax payer monies. Was the public going to be allowed to speak out on this project? Have they been informed or are being informed? We need to get this matter before the Morehead City tax payers and get them involved. ERIC said he had talked to several who were involved in getting the Marlin team here to Morehead and they kept talking about the intangible benefits. PACE WINSTEAD wanted to know what the intangible benefits being touted were. This is not a professional team, more like a college team. Someone is getting a big rake off, it appears. DEBBIE RUCKER asked what “Dawn” wanted us to do. Very few of our members are under the Morehead City jurisdiction and really do not have voice in the matter. TOM AUSTIN, BOB CAVANAUGH, and ERIC BROYLES all disagreed. The TEA Party is like a big umbrella, overseeing the total county. Therefore they, and most of the other attendees agreed, that we should look into the situation and determine if this is a good idea, not only for Morehead but the county.. Others said the ball field is already built, with the original cost to be around $900,000 and the park to be used as a Babe Ruth ball field for Morehead/Carteret children.($2.7 million has now already been spent). PACE wanted to know if anyone has negotiated about sharing a percentage of returns to Morehead. Who pays for the maintenance, lighting, security, etc.? Where did the two million dollars for the park come from? Mostly donations. WAYNE WILLIS said he understood that some of the money came from the O’Neal Estate, since Mr. O’Neal recently passed away, and the field had been named after him. BOB asked ERIC to continue investigating this matter and report his findings at our next meeting.

RAFFLE FRED DECKER is selling tickets for $200.00 in gas for a Scholarship Fund for the Retired Enlisted Association. Criteria for the scholarship is based on academic achievement.

W.B.JONES Congressman Jones is coming to Carteret County May 16, 2011. Tickets are $40.00. All proceeds will go to the Republican Men’s Club – none to Jones or his campaign. If you have a question you wish Jones to answer, please contact the Republican Men’s Club as they are making a list of questions to be asked, since there will be no questions from the floor. WAYNE WILLIS said Jones was on Channel 10 recently and when the credits rolled at the end “Shackleford Banks Horse Assoc.” was listed. He explained the relationship between Jones and Shackleford Banks.

HISTORY OF WILLISTON WAYNE told us he was a student of history and he had a couple of DVD discs he would like to share with us. They would never be a big hit or win an academy award, since there was no sex and no violence. He passed out the Williston tapes to those in attendance.

ATLAS SHRUG THE MOVIE TOM AUSTIN attended the movie in Wilmington and was very impressed. He said it would be playing in Wilson and Wilmington again tomorrow night. KEN LANG said we could go on line to ‘atlasshrugthemovie.com’ for the scedule of viewings.

TEA PARTY PATRIOTS WEB-A-NAR BOB said there will be a “web-a-nar” this coming Monday Night and anyone interested can listen in. Also this Thursday go to Congressional Offices and demand (1)”No Debt Ceiling Increase”, (2) “Support Full Faith and Credit Act – Pay debt first”, and (3) “No Tax Increase”.

KEN said he had seen a spot on Fox last night detailing what will happen if the Debt Ceiling is NOT Increased. We need to stop Government froms spending money we do not have. He would like for us to look into having more seminars put on by the John Locke Society, Civitas, etc. about cutting spending. They should be separate from our meetings, like the one we had a few months ago at the College that HARRY THOMPSON arranged. HARRY said he had a friend, “Chuck Beasley”, who volunteered as a teacher at Gramercy Christian School. His subject is “How GOD has played into the history of our country. He would like to get him to come and speak to us at one of our meetings. Those in attendance voice that they were interested in hearing him speak. BOB said maybe we could get him to come next month.

MISC DISCUSSIONS (a) Debt Ceiling – If we don’t start making changes soon, it may become too late. It is just getting worse. (b) Rush Limbaugh said he is afraid that the Republicans will probably cave on Paul Ryan’s budget and push the TEA Party aside. (c) Government has been stepping on Tax Payers toes for a long long time. (d) Social Security – The first woman to ever receive a Social Security check recently died. She had only paid in $1,500.00 and had ended up collecting thousands. (e) If Bernacke keeps printing money, gas will continue to climb to at least $10.00 a gal. Bernacke will be speaking on TV tomorror on why we must keep printing more money The banking system is also to blame. A $1,000.00 loan eventually becomes a $1,000,000.00 pyramid scheme. The 1933 dollar is now worth only .33 cents. (f) Federal Reserve – When we came off the gold standard it let the government print money to their heart’s content. Nixon took us off the gold standard when he was president; but Roosevelt made it illegal to own gold and required anyone having gold be required to turn it in to the government. It happened then, it can happen again, so owning gold may not be the answer we think it is. You could even be charged or taxed for owning gold. Barry Goldwater, while being considered incompetent, predicted exactly what is happening today. SB 490 – Modernizing Insurance – Safe drivers are currently subsidizing unsafe drivers. HOWARD says the current system is not working. Is the new system being proposed any better or not? BOB said when he moved from Jacksonville, Florida to Carteret County (NC) his insurance doubled. He was told he was now in a “high population density area”!!!! KEN and several others had had the same thing happen to them. Cherry Point makes us a high population density area. BOB said, since the meeting had lasted longer than anticipated due to our many discussions, he would ask PEGGY GARNER if she would hold her collected information on the the July 4th parades until next meeting night. PEGGY agreed, since she was the only one of the committee in attendance tonight and she had not had time to discuss her findings with them. Meeting adjourned.

Minutes submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER