CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MAY 17, 2011
Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance let by Wayne Willis
Invocation by DEBBIE RUCKER
Number of Attendees – 25
GUEST SPEAKER – DAVID HORTON
Mr. Horton said our biggest problem is…..People who spend the money don’t care how it is spent!!!! Morehead City continues ‘business as usual’; ‘no cutbacks;’ and ‘no changes to reduce spending’. If we can’t control at the local level…how can we possibly control at the state and federal level.
As to the “Park”, it started with a grant of $900,000. He had thought that was a lot of money, however, they had gotten a grant from the state of $200,000, and donations of $300,000, so the town only had to match $400,000. The estimate for the park was $922,000. A year later the scope had changed and the cost was now $1,003,000. The next year it was $2.1 million, going from $922 thousand to $2.1 million in just two years. It is now $2.4 million. All the overruns have been paid by the town. Big Rock paid for the bleachers. There are no adequate bathrooms. The Marlins want better bath rooms, concession stands, batting cages, etc. Mr. Horton had tried to talk to them about wanting all these additions and goodies and to think about all the money that could have been saved to no avail. Because the town finally set their foot down about selling beer, they now, even after a year, do not have a long term contract, only a one year ‘short term’ franchise type deal, which agrees to only $500.00 per game to the town.
KEN LANG said he had been listening to Lockwood Phillips interview Buddy Daniels. He said the kids playing the game do not get paid. The town provides them a place to stay while they are here. Riverfront Sports is raking in all the proceeds with no payouts. All expenses are paid by Morehead City.
The neighborhood came out against …noise, location, etc. The Town Manager is one of the ones pushing it. The way it stands, three votes will pass anything.
The idea at the beginning was a place for the American Legion Team to play, but as things progressed those players could no longer make the team.
Just as the ‘boat ramp’ on Radio Island, is great, but the cost is tremendous $150,000.00 and while the state paid most, Morehead keeps coming up with grandiose ideas that keep costing the taxpayers.
Sewer rates have increased 60% in the last couple of years and they are saying they need to raise them again.
Question was raised “Why the contractor was not held responsible for the overruns. Mr. Horton explained that it was not the fault of the contractor but the changes in scope.
TOM HARMON thinks we should be getting at least a percentage of the income.
BOB CAVANAUGH asked Mr. Horton, “What can the TEA Party do?” Mr. Horton said we could encourage candidates, who will try to put a stop to the run away spending, to run for office. BOB asked for volunteers to please step up and help.
DAVID COX wanted to know if anyone had looked into other cities with this type of sport. Mr. Horton said all that he had heard of were utilization of old stadiums, and not the building of new facilities from scratch.
ERIC BROYLES wanted to know if you could just go to the field, get in, and use the facilities. Mr. Horton said ‘no, the facility was under lock and key’ and you had to get permission. The fencing was put around the field so no one could see into the Marlins’ games.
LOU KUKULINSKI wanted to know when, or if, this would go from a Morehead City project to a county project. Mr. Horton said this is not in the future than anyone knows of since the County has not shown any interest.
BOB thanked Mr. Horton for coming to speak with us and invited him back whenever he would like. We appreciated his input to the situation.
WAYNE WILLIS thanked us for our support, but he did not win. He said this was a good civics lesson. When he ran three years ago, he pushed for a merger of Harkers Island with the Carteret/Craven EMC. Harkers Island had 1200 meters, 50 year old poles, and no cash flow, and did not generate enough money to continue. There were lies told of possible loss of jobs, etc., and the merger, then, did not go through. However this changed when it was found to be beneficial and the combining was negotiated. During this election there were three people running for this position, Wayne who had served on the board last year, a guy that had been appointed (who ran as the incumbent and managed to get his name first on the slate of candidates) and a third opponent. This is where Wayne shot himself in the foot. Last year there were only 740 votes cast and Wayne thought if there were more incentive to vote, more people would get involved in voting; so he recommended the Co-op give away $200.00 free electricity. More people did vote (like 2800) however; most did not know or even care who got elected, so they just voted for the first name on the ballot. Duh! Guess who won! Lesson learned — “Educate the Voters”. He told of the time his father had run for sheriff and won the count. However, it was decided a few days later they needed to recount the ballots and his father now lost by 3 votes. Guess some things never change.
PEGGY GARNER reported that she had represented the TEA party last night at the County Commissioners meeting. (Only one there in the red shirt.)
It appeared to once again be Support School Increased Budget Night. Several people, (ex school teachers, business men, doctors, doctor’s wife, college student, social worker, etc.) all had been questioned as to the quality of schools, prior to a potentially new professional/businessman coming to Carteret County. (Apparently we have nothing else to offer – my comment.) All said the Commissioners should find what funds the schools want, including increasing taxes to provide them. Any decrease made in school funding now may not be seen as an overwhelming impediment today, or even next year, but if you take a child just starting in first grade, they could assure you that that reduction will be most prominent by the time he is eligible to graduate high school. Any reduction will impact our schools tomorrow. Having already suffered cuts, further cuts in staff will ensure the quality will go down and handicap those left. No teacher should have to go home with a pink slip. We are robbing students from having a better future. One businessman thought we should stop all foreign aid to countries that just hate us and use those funds to pay for our schools. The social worker said she had been told that the school her daughter was going to was going to lose 25% of the teachers in that school. Commissioner Holt wanted to know which school her daughter went to and she replied Morehead Middle school.
Dr. Novey was asked to give his input into the matter and Commissioner Holt asked about the 25% cut in Morehead Middle. Dr. Novey said notifications were sent out alerting the possibility of a cut. The state’s cuts would influence the number. Most of those receiving cuts would be Probationary Teachers. The RIF policy will not interfere with education. The positions are not eliminated. Someone, the one cut or another, can come in later and fill that position. This does not mean we are going to lose 25%. Commissioner Holt wanted to know if the 25% was Dr. Novey’s ‘worse case’ scenario, and could he give a ‘best case’ scenario. Dr. Novey said with the figures and percentages being discussed and bantered around, couldn’t tell exactly how many teachers would be involved. There were too many outside factors.
Commission Pat Joyce said he understood many of the Teacher Assistants were also part time bus drivers. Dr. Novey said employees have to work so many hours in order to receive the benefit packages. Doing both gave them not only the hours but the incentive to work harder and do better jobs.
Linda Haynes, President of the Down East Library and Hannah Beasley, Former teacher and member of the Down East Library Board, both requested help with the Library. The people down east have held used book sales, bake sales, barbeques, etc. to raise the money to fund the library. It is now worth over $200,000. The library has been manned by volunteers and now they would like to be able to hire and pay someone to do this. They would like to give this valuable property to the county and in return, the county to allocate $10,000.00 per year for this position.
BUDGET – Wayne Deal, Interim County Manager, said the 2011-12 budget was very similar to past budgets, taking in consideration the reval. He has asked Carl (Tilman, I think he said) to come to a County Commissioners meeting to explain the consequences of the reval to the commissioners. He then turned the presentation of the proposed budget over to Dee Meshaw, Assistant County Manager of Finance and Administration.
The total recommended budget for all funds is $89.87 million (a decrease of $6.92 million). Of that $74.73 million is general fund, which is $2.94 million (or 3.79%) less than the 2010-2011 budget. This budget has few new initiatives and no increase in services or personnel. Educational funding will be maintained at the same level as this year. School operating expenses of $18.75 million and capital expenses of $1.2 million is less than the school board’s request of $22.16 for operations and $3.1 million in capital.
$604,000 has been allocated for a document imaging system for the Department of Social Services. This system will enable converting files to a digital format, allowing staff to share client information and regain some of the space that hard copy files have utilized in the past.
While most department budgets have been decreased or reduced, Solid Waste and Public Works have increased $50,000, and the combination of the school system and Community College, no change from fiscal year 2010.
Many facts and figures were presented but this reporter was unable to keep up with the fast and furious charts and graphs presented. If you are interested in further detail please go to
www.carteretcountygov.org, click on county budget FY 2011-2012 blue tab for the complete budget (all 240 pages). (Thank goodness Ms Meshaw was very selective of the information she presented.)
Much discussion followed PEGGY’s presentation. Discussed the “teaching to test”. If you fail the first time, you can be re-taught and try again. This is insane. What are we doing to our kids? They remediate the kids until they can pass these mandatory tests. They are now teaching all year long how to pass the test. Is there another option to testing? They do not have any opportunity for creative thinking. ERIC BROYLES said he feels this is more “protecting our jobs” and not teaching our kids. One of the problems is the unions. RUTH CHEWRING (please excuse me if I have the name wrong) said we need the unions to back the teachers in case a parent wants to sue for some silly little thing the teacher may or may not have been guilty of. CATIE MCCABE said while she attends Gramercy Christian School, she has four other siblings who attended public school. From what she had heard, to be a coach you had to teach a subject, even if you were not qualified to teach that subject. This can not be conducive to a good education.
ERIC passed out a handout he had printed on the county schools. He said it was now his understanding that the state was NOT going to shove cost of school buses and several other previously mentioned items down the throats of the counties. Thank goodness.
One of our members (sorry, I did not get your name) said he had had many problems with teachers while he was in school. His conservatism was in constant attack from the liberal teachers. They would gang up on anyone they felt didn’t agree with their philosophy. He had been accused of being a racist and inciting a riot when he had worn a flag on the back of his shirt and walked through the hallways. He said we should be protecting the students and not the teachers.
BOB said one of the things that had created problems with the schools was the stimulus package, which encouraged the schools to hire more teachers and when the stimulus money was gone, the schools were not equipped financially to maintain paying those teachers. The money is gone but the school doesn’t want to cut those positions.
Average teacher annual salary in North Carolina is $47,000.00, not including benefits package. They do not pay for their health care benefits, and pay very little towards their retirement. North Carolina is 27th on the pay scale. The median North Carolina income is $42,000.00 and those people have to pay for their health care and retirement.
TREASURER’S REPORT. NANCY BOCK, Treasurer, reported we have $706.00 in the bank.
Meeting adjourned at 7:30 pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.