CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
Meeting of
31 January 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:08pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by DIANE LANG
Invocation by HARRY THOMPSON

BOB introduced the new faces….BARBARA RAWLS (who had attended a meetings in the past.  She said there hadn’t been very many people at the meeting that night.)
He then introduced DON HOLLISTER.  He said he and Don go all the way back to the very beginnings of his career in the Marine Corps.  Neither was 21 yet when they met.  They spent a good part of their time trying to find ways to skate out of work.  He welcomed both and said he hoped to see both of them on a regular basis.

He welcomed WAYNE WILLIS back (from exile or wherever he had been)  /WAYNE said he had had to hire a body guard, and Santa Claus (CLAYTON GILLIKIN) qualified.  He said he was glad to be there tonight though.

BOB said there was a little news on the local coordinator’s internet call last night.  Tea Party Patriots is organizing a DC rally on March 24th.  It will be on the East Lawn of the Capitol Building, directly across the street from the Supreme Court.  They are still lining up speakers.  He wanted to know if we wanted to participate in this, if so then we need to organize a bus to take folks up there.  More that half those in attendance raised their hands as interested in going.  Question was raised if we knew anything for sure yet.  BOB said it was still all in the planning stage, but he would let us know more as it became available and they started publishing the speakers.  LOU KUKULINSI wanted to know if we were to take the tar and pitchforks.  BOB said if you like, but you can’t take them over to the Supreme Court, though.  If you want to go and stand in front of the Supreme Court you can not have any yelling or shouting, no cheers; you can have some signs and that is it.  KEN wanted to know if we could bring our tents, like the OWS crew did.  They were more welcome than we have been.  ERIC said that’s good “TEA PARTY OCCUPIES”. Good slogan.  KEN said the Occupy group in DC was ordered out a couple of days ago, but are still there.  The Park Service said they were going to take a measured approach.  Which means they are not going to do anything.  LOU said ‘Speaking about tar and feathers, did you all see what Allen West said about Pelosi and Harry?’  He thought he would send West a couple of hundred bucks just for kicks.  KEN said ‘it really ticked Bob Beckle off.’  BOB said if we are going to DC, then he thinks the smallest bus we can get is 45 seats.  He will talk to the gal we normally deal with try to get that locked in…get us a price.  Need to maybe check with Americans for Prosperity to see if they are providing buses for $25.00 a seat again, which would be great.  WAYNE wanted to know if it would be over night.  BOB said the rally starts at noon and normally lasts until 2 or 3.  WAYNE wanted to know if it would be on a Saturday and BOB said yes.  BOB said there will be events all week up to Saturday, so if anyone wants to go up there and spend a week and take in all the events.  They are going to have different training seminars and training sessions, and they are going to block off a set of rooms and the Hyatt Regency right there in down town DC.  WAYNE asked if that would be within walking distance of where we want to be.  BOB said it was a little more expensive and then they hoped to get something out around Arlington a little cheaper for folks who can not afford down town DC hotels.  WAYNE asked if the bus would put us out right where the rally was and BOB said yes and pick us up right where he put us off.  BOB said ‘if you haven’t been on one of our bus trips before, he thinks they are a lot of fun.’  A lot of discussion followed.
BOB advised that you not take the seat next to the restroom as he had had to do last time. They cut the air conditioner off, because the driven was cold, and his seat was right over the heater and engine. He said it was miserable. Someone said we might bring a sweater for the bus driver.

BOB said, as you all know several county commissioners are not going to run for re-election.  He said he had entertained the idea of his running for Holt Faircloth’s seat, so he had called him today and Holt told him that Terry Frank (of Frank’s Doors in Newport) is planning to run and Holt gave him a solid endorsement; so BOB said there was no since in the two of them burning up money against each other.  If Frank is a good man in Holt’s opinion, it was good enough for him.  BOB went over and introduced himself to Frank in his office and told him about us (the TEA Party) and invited him to come down some Tuesday and introduce himself and let us throw some questions at him.  He said tonight is out, he had business things to take care of, but he wrote the time and dates of our meetings.  BOB said on the way to our meeting tonight Pam Hansom called him and started lobbying him about Terry Franks.  He told her not to worry, he had already talked to him and Holt.  Anyway, she said he was a very early supporter of hers and she thought he was a real stand up guy and very conservative.  BOB said he had seen him at some the Republican men’s club meeting occasionally.  HOWARD GARNER said there was another potential candidate that he had heard of.  BOB asked if he was talking about Larry Land?  HOWARD said yes.  BOB then recognized KEN LANG, since he had a whole list of possible candidates that he has been networking and trying to get information out of people.
KEN said some of these people, the names are kind of being thrown out, so he was not even sure if they were really interested, and some he didn’t even know who they are, nor whose seat they would be running for.  BOB said if anyone knows any of the people he mentions, please speak up.  He said Larry Land and Terry Frank were on his list for Holt’s seat.  BOB said Pam told him that Larry Land was a Republican of convenience.  KEN said that was kind of what he heard also.  However, we still may want to vet him.  Doug Harris’ seat, the name Jimmy Farrington’s name was thrown out.   Jimmy lives on Emerald Isle.  He runs Yard Works.  KEN said he knew him and he was a hard worker.  His mother is Beth Stone.  Both she and her husband are very active in the Republican party and they have been to some TEA party meetings.  In fact they were here this winter (early) at one of our meetings here.  She has not been as active lately because she had some heart surgery, but he thinks she is coming back.  BOB said he had known Jimmy about 20 years and he is a hard worker.  He does not know what his politics are.  KEN said he is a young man, conservative, can vouch that he is a hard worker.  He has built a company that has been around now for roughly 15 years or so (BOB said he thought more than 20 years because he and Brian Watson, who started Carolina Gardens, and they split up.  BOB said he knew because they had asked him to take care of the Surf Shop and he had encouraged them to start their own business and they did.)  Several people spoke up as knowing Jimmy and all spoke favorable.  KEN said he would work with Jimmy and try to get him to come in and talk with us also.  KEN said another name that he doesn’t know is Randy Ramsey.  ROMA WADE said he was the owner of Jarrett Bay Boat Works.  WAYNE said, Actually his daddy is.  His daddy is where the money comes from.  Roma said, It doesn’t make any difference, the Ramsey family is where the money comes from.  KEN wanted to know who’s seat would he run for.  Would that be Pat’s seat?  HOWARD said he thought it would be Doug Harris’ seat the way he understood that district went, but then again maybe it would be Pat’s seat.  Discussion on areas of Districts.  KEN said he didn’t what those districts looked like.   BOB said he did and gave the boundaries as he understood them.  HOWARD wanted to know if anyone knew where Randy Ramsey lived. HOWARD said when the Ramsey family first came here they lived on Harkers Island.  WAYNE said his daddy still lives on Harkers Island. He continued with a short history of the Ramsey family since they came to this area.  HOWARD asked where the money came from for the business since he had known Cab (Randy’s daddy) since the 60’s and he had gone bankrupt prior to coming to Carteret County.  KEN said the question he would have is what their politics are.  He also brought up that we have three Board of Education members up for re-election.  He did not have any name for those other than we have talked about previously.  He was kind of hoping that Scott Carpenter would be here tonight so we could continue to encourage him to run for one of those.  We do need to talk to him some more about running.  FRED DECKER said he was trying to get Bob Harden to run.  He is an investment banker for Merrill Lynch.  His office is in the Bank of America.  KEN said FRED had told us that last time, so has he (Fred) made any progress yet?  FRED said he would do it tomorrow.  KEN said ‘don’t let it slip too long because he has to file and his filing date is the 13th.  Not quite  two weeks.  LOU said he knew someone who was running for Pat Joyce’s seat …Randy Feagle. HOWARD said he works for the school system.  LOU said yeah, he’s a teacher out there at East Carteret High School.  KEN asked, Can’t he run for County Commissioner if he is a teacher?  HOWARD said he was just scared of him because he was connected too close to the Board of Education.  KEN said just because he works there doesn’t mean he isn’t a conservative.  LOU said all the principles around there hate him, so he must be a good guy.  PEGGY said she lived almost next door to and  went to school with his mother and she hopes he has changed since he was a kid.  LOU said he had retired as a Lt Col in the National Guard.  HOWARD said his mother and step-father used to run Walston’s Hardware in Cape Carteret.  CLAYTON asked how old is this lad.  LOU said he thought about 52 or 53, somewhere around that.  KEN said 20 years in the military will change you a little bit.  KEN said he would recommend anyone here that knows potential candidates to go talk to them and if they express and interest then we can broaden that out and talk a little bit more and see if there is someone we can recommend.  BOB said if we found anyone interested to invite them to come out and talk to us.  KEN said we need to replace the three people who are up for re-election on the BOE.  FRED said he had talked to Judy Wilgus about Scott being precinct chairman of Wildwood.  Since then he has asked him to run for School Board.  He is President of the Home Owners Assoc.  and a few other things over there in Brandywine.  Judy had called Scott back about being Precinct Chairman so he was going to take that.  FRED asked Judy what was more important Precinct Chairman or School Board.  She said School Board.  KEN said he agreed and was hoping Scott would be here tonight so we could talk to him about running.  There was some discussion on Linwood who lives on Hwy 101 running first for Pat Joyce’s seat and then for BOE.

BOB said he guessed we had all seen in the newspaper where the School Board is asking for more money…4.5 million dollars for construction/maintenance.  KEN said every week they have a little article where they are asking for money for something else.  They needed more money for bus drivers about 2 weeks ago.  They blamed the County Commissioners for that.  They said the County Commissioners didn’t give them enough money and they had to lay off all these teachers aids.  BOB said he had put in a call to Dave M (?) Finance Budget guy for the school system and as of yet he has not returned his call.  HOWARD told BOB if he would back up a few years the schools got into real bad shape because they spent the maintenance money for something other than maintenance.  This is a theory of his, it is kind of hard to turn down money for new roofs and windows, etc; but he has a feeling that they think the Commissioners won’t turn them down for maintenance, and once they get their hands on it they will spend it like they please.  BOB said he had seen that the school board can submit a budget and the county, state and feds all send them money, and once they get it they can move those piles of money all around the dang place and then yell well we need money for this and money for that.  HOWARD said he feels that is what is going to happen to this maintenance money if they get it.  BOB said they play games with the school budget and anybody we vet for county commissioner we really need to hone in on the education department in the county and how the money is being spent.  We need somebody who knows something about budgets.  That is why this Terry Frank may be good because he runs a pretty good size organization, so he should know money and budgets.  KEN said he thought we need in the Board of Commissioners to do that, but we need people on the Board of Education who are willing to do that; at least to be able to look into the budget and understand where the money is being spent and whether or not it is being spent wisely; because right now we have a rubber stamp in the Board of Education.  The County Commissioners is actually doing the job that the BOE should be doing.  He knows the commissioners that he has talked to would love to have a BOE assume that responsibility and do their job.  They are not.  They are playing politics and just asking for more money.  Part of the conversations that he had on the County Commissioners also overlapped into the school board and he has been working a little bit with someone else to help him try to understand what is going on in the budget and it was suggested that he ask the school board for the last 3 years of their end of year reports.  So he did.  This dates back over a month or two now.  He got an email back that said that their end of year reports were on the web site.  So KEN went on the web site and found them and they are the comprehensive annual financial report.  That is the report that is put together by the independent auditors and they only have two years on there 2008/2009 and 2009/2010.  They do not have 2010/2011 on there yet.  They do not approve that audit report until February 7th. That is when they have a BOE meeting and have an extended public comment session during the BOE meeting, usually it is like 30 minutes.  He thinks they have either an hour or maybe an hour and a half allocated for public comments at this meeting.  Of course it is going to be swamped with C4 people,  BOB asked what would the public comment session be about if the budget is already over and done with.  KEN said they are planning the new budget.  After the meeting on the 7th, they should have the 2010/2011 budget ready to be posted on the web site.  Anyway, he down loaded the first two reports and sent them to someone to look at and he said that was not exactly what we need.  We need the school system end of year report, not the auditors.  That is where you are going to find the information you need.  So, KEN went back to the school board official he had spoken to before and said ‘don’t you have an internal end of year report that you guys prepare and that the auditors use.  They said yes we do but that is an internal document.  KEN asked why he could not get a copy, hasn’t the BOE approved that document.  They said ’Oh, no, we just send that internal document to the auditors and that is what they prepare their report from’.  KEN said ’you mean that you send a fiscal report of what you have done the last year and the BOE hadn’t even looked at it!’  He said ’yeah’ that is what we do.  KEN told him he couldn’t even imagine that.  So right now it appears our only option is to wait until this other auditor report comes out and see if we can analyze it.  The auditors report is very complicated.  It may not contain all the numbers that would have been on the internal report.  Anyway, Commissioner Comer is going to be meeting with the school board in about a week and they are going to discuss this issue of the budget and he told KEN to send him whatever information that he had and the conversations that he had had with the school board, which he has already done.  He is going to ask those questions at that meeting.  Also at that meeting they are going to propose to have an open meeting that will be attended by school board and commissioners and he asked KEN to ask TEA Party members, who were interested in the budget, to come to that meeting.  No date or time has been set yet.  His rationale was that from his experience we (the TEA Party) are more likely to ask questions that may not be asked by other people.  He wants to have some input from the TEA Party as well.  KEN told him there was no doubt in his mind there definitely would be some people from the TEA Party there.  He will let us know when the meeting is set up.  Hopefully, he will have some additional information from Commissioner Comer that he will be able to disseminate before the meeting.  This will be a separate meeting from the previously mentioned Feb 7th meeting.  As you know when you go to one of those meetings they are very tightly controlled.  You get up and say your piece and they really don’t address what you have to say.  Then they conduct their own meeting and you are not allowed to speak.  Commissioner Comer’s meeting is during the week sometime off anybody’s agenda.  He is not sure how they will announce this meeting but KEN knows he plans to have other people there. PAT NALITZ asked if the budget figures was available.  KEN said yes, you could get it off the web site.  Go to the BOE web site menu and on the side, go to finance, it will bring up a screen and the very last item on the bottom right are the two comprehensive end of year audit reports.  Does it show the line items.  KEN said yes, but it is an extremely hard report to work with and to print it out is several inches thick.  That is why we want the internal documents it should be a lot smaller and a lot easier to understand.  He is going to try to keep working on getting the internal report.  He asked Commissioner Comer to see if he could get it for us.  He does not see why we can not have that document.  BOB said at one of the last Commissioners meeting Commission Harris did a power point presentation about how the schools were getting more money each year than they claimed they were getting (utilizing the BOE’s own figures).  There were some ugly things said in the newspaper anonymously condemning Commissioner Harris.  To BOB it was one of the most transparent, where you could see where the problems are, and the things the commissioners have to deal with.  Wish we had more government like that where you can see what is really going on behind the scene and how they play games with the numbers.  PAT asked has it gotten this way because over the years they have not had anyone overlooking and demanding these budgets; so they have just gotten to the point that they say no one is asking or interested so why bother.  HOWARD said as far back as he can remember, and he has been here all his life, t
he board of education has been a rubber stamp to the Superintendent.  They did not make decisions, just said yes sir.  He also wanted to point out on that power point presentation by Commissioner Harris, the school superintendent stated to Comm. Harris that those figures he had used were all wrong.  So Comm. Harris says ‘you show us where we are wrong and we will correct them.’ Two months later, they had never carried the commissioners any new figures.  They publicly stated they were wrong and that they would provide the correct figures but they didn’t.  KEN said today Commissioner Comer told him they still haven’t received any corrected figures.  HOWARD said then it’s been about three months now, right.  KEN said yes.  His guess is and Comm. Comer agrees with him, that they have no intention of ever giving him any explanation on last year’s budget.  They are already moving on toward their ‘smoke and mirrors’ next year’s budget.  HOWARD said they think it is all forgotten.  KEN said yes, so they just ignored that and are moving on.  DENNIS said he hated to beat a dead horse, but who is in charge.  Doesn’t someone have the authority to make decisions and follow through.  KEN said it is convoluted, really.  He doesn’t know why it was set up this way, but as he understands it, it is the same in every county.  The state board of education and the local board are somewhat independent of the county; however, they receive money from the federal government, the state government and the local government, so basically what the county government did last year and maybe they have done it on occasion in previous years but last year they said ‘before they approved our local tax payer dollars for education, we want to see the federal dollars, the state dollars, and what you intend to spend our money on.  They tried to get to the bottom of how all that money was being spent.  Well the BOE kept changing the numbers.  They gave them at least four sets of budget numbers.  Partially they claimed because, well, they didn’t have as much information as needed from the state and so with Gov. Perdue threatening…you know they put blame all over the place.  Each set of numbers went up every time—by about 3 million dollars each time.  So from beginning to end they had an increase of about 12 million dollars.  At the beginning they asked for 3 million more than what they had put in their first budget.  At the end they were still asking for 3 million more even though they had gotten increases all along, but they never explained what that 3 million was going to be used for.  BOB said ‘save teachers jobs’.  KEN said that was one of the explanations.  Several comments about no one ever really got fired that they had heard about.  If they had they had gotten hired back.  Someone said we seem to be dancing around the same pole trying to get answers and we will continue to dance around
the same pole.  We control the county government, we control the state government don’t we.  Why can’t we seem to get anything done.  KEN said the only thing he could see to fix this for Carteret County is to elect some school board members who will work in concert with what the county commissioners want.  Right now they are stonewalled.  That is why it is so important to find people right now who will replace the three that are up for re-election.  Someone asked who approves the budget?  KEN said both the BOE and County Commissioners approve the budget, however, the real kicker behind this is the county commissioners can approve the budget and the day afterwards the BOE can change where that money is going to be spent.  But that isn’t the real problem.  The real problem is trying to understand what the budget being submitted to the county is in the first place.  The county was very adamant this last time that they had to be given certain information in order to understand the budget and it ended with the presentation that Commissioner Harris did where he showed a chart and said all your numbers do not add up.  Chairman of the BOE, Al Hill, said yes it does, you don’t have the right numbers and Harris said give me the right numbers and we will work together to figure it out and the BOE three months later has never given any numbers.  They basically ignored them.  CLAYTON GILLIKIN said there is only one way for the County Commissioners to get the numbers they need, and that is when the time comes to give them the money, they not give them one red cent.  Then they will have to come up with what the Commissioners need.  BOB said you remember they withheld $500,000.00 pending the school board providing some sort of quarterly statement and the quarter wasn’t even over yet and the County Commissioners released the funds.  BOB said he told Terry Frank that one of our objectives is get rid of  the current Superintendent of Schools and put a new one in there.  This guy is interested in nothing but building an empire.  ERIC said, unfortunately his contract has just been renewed.  HOWARD said we got a copy of a report put out by Civitas.  They got their figures from the State Department.  Perdue claims we have lost teachers.  North Carolina has more teachers on the payroll than they had last year, so Bev lied too.

BOB said talking about the school stuff, ERIC has been doing a little research on a slightly different angle.  ERIC said this coming year we are going to be up for another battle for our funds.  Last year they advised the county during one of these meetings with the county that there was going to be some major shortfalls in the following year.  He thinks a lot of it was capital expenditures.  We just all saw the article in the newspaper announcing that they were asked for 4.5 million.  Someone told him that our county ranked number 12 in support of our school system (how much money we the taxpayer give to the county per pupil).  Number 12 in the state.  Out of 115 school districts, one being the best, 115 being the worst, we ranked number 12 in the financial support we give per student in the state of NC.  He decided to do a little fact finding in all this and he found a wonderful website that is put out by the school government.  It is called schools.nc.gov.  Boy is there a ton of statistical information there.  It was a hay day.  Right now in the state Carteret County ranks 96 in the amount of funds we get per pupil from the state.  Remember 1 is good, 115 is bad.  So that means there is 95 counties that get more money than we do per student.  Currently our students get $4,992.00 per student from the state.  We all pay taxes and we would expect all of our children get an equal education, right?  In order to get an equal education you would have to spend equally on each child.  Right?  No?  Should but we don’t.  Logically you should OK?  Hyde County gets $13,000.00 per student.  $8,000.00 more than our students get.  Terrell County gets $11,108.00 per student.  Now to add insult to injury the same scenario exists with federal funds, which he believes is probably controlled by the state and how they distribute it.  Again Carteret County is 89 in ranking on that (funds from the federal government).  Hyde County is number 1 and Terrell County is number 2 in funds received from both the state and federal governments.  What also makes it painful for us is per capital income in this county we are number 12.  Per capital income is $37,000.00.  So we are paying more taxes but we are getting less of it back.  Our kids are being slighted by the state in the quality of education that they get.  Just think about this, if the state just increased our amount by $500.00, making it $5500.00 per student, we might move up to about middle way in the scale there.  That $500.00 equates to 4 million dollars because we have 8500 students.  On the federal funds, the same way, even if they just increased it by 2 or 3 hundred, then we would have another 3 million so the issue that the school board has is not with the county, it is with the state and federal governments and how those funds are distributed.  BOB said you said Hyde County got the most money for their schools per student.  What was their per capita rank?  ERIC said $28,251.00.  BOB asked which is where on the scale?  ERIC said 72.  ERIC said he tried to see if there was a correlation between per capita income and the amount each county got per student.  There isn’t.  There are some counties that have high per capita income and they get more than we do.  They are getting 6/7 thousand dollars per student.  He is now beginning to think it is more a political thing than based on capita income.  CLAYTON wanted to know if he could check to see if it was a Republican county or Democrat.  ERIC said he didn’t know that.  HOWARD said Hyde County was represented by Mark Basnight, he was pretty sure.  HOWARD said he was the head man in the Senate and probably the most powerful man in the state, running the show like he wanted it.  ERIC said well, that would explain why they are getting the money.  In the old days, the way teachers got appointed, so if you had a Democratic government in the county most of the teachers were going to be Democrats.  BARBARA RAWLS said students should be getting additional money for attending schools in those areas with military.   ERIC said OK, let’s check Craven County.  They get less than us.  They are ranked 101.  On the federal level they do rank 37.  Now you would think the Gov would take care of her own back yard.  VERNE THOMPSON said the only reason why it would be different from one county to another in educating the number of students, so there is not reason to expect that the amount per pupil should be the same in two different counties.  ERIC said he had thought that through himself and then he went and looked at Wake County.  They are 113.  Now you would think Wake County, one of the highest cost to live in, would be getting 8 or 9 thousand dollars per student.  No! They get $2,700.00 per student.  VERNE said that was sort of the point the was getting at.  A lot of factors go into the amount of what is to be spent to educate a given student.  For example: Using Hyde County.  Hyde County gets a lot because Hyde County area wise is very, very large, so on average the students are sparsely dispersed.  Which means they have higher per student busing costs, and fewer schools because they have less density.  On the other hand Wake or Mecklinburg County have dense population so they are able to have bigger schools.  They are able to have a lot more students in each of those schools and the transportation costs are also a lot less.  He is not saying that there is no element of politics involved, what he is saying is that there is a host of legitimate reasons why there will be quite a bit of difference in the educational costs from county to county and the per student cost.  ERIC said our county runs what 60/75 miles from one end to the other and how far does Hyde County run?  VERNE said he had no idea.  BOB asked if he had ever driven up to Manteo.  It is a long lonesome drive.  ERIC said the point that he was trying to make – VERNE said he suspected by what you had seen in Hyde County, you will also see in Perquimmons County and Pasquetank County because they are large areas and sparsely populated.  BOB said before you check them out and go any further, the money from the schools comes from the ad valorium tax  base.  The more prosperous and the more intensely built the county is the higher the revenue is going into the county so you will have x number of dollars available for the school system and will be based on how—-ERIC said he understood that—-BOB said Hyde County is probably 90% swamp and wilderness and very rural and there is no major towns up there.  They just don’t have the ad val tax base where the county can step up to the plate and contribute any significant amount to the schools so the state tries to level the playing field so that all the schools are the same… in other words the Chemistry Class that is taught in Hyde County is the same type of Chemistry Class taught in Carteret County with all the same equipment, microscopes, etc.  Items that Hyde County would not be able to afford on its own.  So the state steps up and tries to level the playing field.
Discussion among the members (all talking at once).   KEN said he still thinks you need to know how the formula works in distributing the funds.  HARRY THOMPSON’s wife wanted to know if free meals were considered.  If you get free meals, you get free dental care.  That sounds crazy, but it is the truth.  If your kids are going on a field trip and you are going to let them buy their lunch somewhere else they still want those free lunches so they can get the money for the lunches they don’t get.  It is ridiculous.  ERIC said the point he was trying to make here we are looking a maybe a 7 million dollar request by a school board this year and we want to harness as much of the money as we can get from the state, because the reality is we are going to need it.  Otherwise, everybody’s taxes are going to go sky high.  BOB said that is what our state legislatures are for.  ERIC said he had emailed Pat McElraft and Jean Preston on this issue, because he wanted and explanation as to why we are 96.  The other concern he has is we have about 1100 students that they classify impaired, blindness, deafness, mental, physical and all that.  You probably have a low teacher ratio in order to train these kids.  Probably 100 or more teachers are devoted to these kids.  LOU said what does it matter how much money we get as long as the school board has not accountability and we have no idea where the money is going.  WAYNE said in ERIC’s quest to find sanity in these figures remember this, one person’s name that has already been called, Mark Basnight.  He has been until very recently the most powerful man in NC and he still has a whole lot more influence than he has any business having.  That is why the money and it is not just for education.  They have been trying to do something that can’t be done with Oregon Inlet for 50 years.  You can not get there from here.  Hwy 64 was paved from Oklahoma or somewhere across NC so they could get there to Basnight’s hotels.  ERIC said he still thinks we need to look into this data he was presenting tonight.  It is worth pursuing.  We know our school board is going to be asking for a lot of money this year.  HOWARD asked to explain something on these special needs kids.  He doesn’t know how much it is now, but if they can get a kid on Ridlelan or some mind altering drug, the state gets extra money.  Several years ago it was $1,700.00 per student classed as special needs.  Catie’s mother is a Nurse Practitioner.  She worked for a Pediatric and Adolescent Practice.  Teachers will pressure parents to put kids on these mind altering drugs for the money (and make their job easier).  An example was this mother came in to Dawn just about begging to get her kid on this drug.  So Dawn put the kid on a small dosage and just a few days later the mother came back in saying the teacher had said another kid had acted just like hers and that kid was on twice the dosage her kid was and wanted her to get the doctor to increase it.  Dawn told the lady she did not practice cookie cutter medicine.  That is what is going on.  It is a financial advantage.  They won’t admit it.  He had a school teacher asking for donations and he questioned her.  She said she didn’t know they got extra money.  This has been 7 or 8 years ago and he dug into it and at that time they were getting $1,700.00 extra for every kid they could get on these drugs.  ERIC said he didn’t know about that, but if it were the case, he thought we would get more than $900.00 per student, because we’ve got 12% of our kids that are impaired in some fashion.  HOWARD said the County Commissioners do not find out about this extra money.  The BOE does not tell them about this.  ERIC said he was waiting for some answers from our representatives to see if they can tell us how they are calculating the distribution of our funds.  He thinks every one of our children are entitled to an equal opportunity in an education.  If that is not happening, then we need to stand up.  LOU said we still need to start with our School Board.  No matter how much we get from the government unless we get the school board squared away it is all for nothing.  BOB asked HOWARD didn’t he say the charter schools only spend something like $4,000 per student?  HOWARD said at Gramercy (a Christian School) it is a little over $3,000.00 per student per year, whereas Carteret County is right at $9,000.00.  Gramercy’s test scores exceed those of any public school in the county.  BOB wanted to know if Gramercy received state funds.  HOWARD said no.  ERIC said he could pull up charter schools and see how they are being treated.  We only have two in the county.  He is hoping we can get some of the attention of C4 and the school board because our argument is going to be if the state and federal distribution is not fair then why are you all beating up on our County Commissioners and county citizens when they have already paid the taxes.  It strengthens our position to say no, as a county, we are not going to give you any more money.  You have to go to the state and beat them up or take them to court or whatever you have to do to get your money.  BOB said let’s get our numbers so we can have the facts when we talk to them.  Someone in the meeting said until we get a good accountability of where the money is going we are spinning our wheels.  BOB said the problem is you don’t know how they misspent the money until the end of the year when you get the auditors report and then it is too late, and by then they are asking money for the new school year.  CLAYTON said the BOE was wanting to get away from the county setting the tax rate and let the schools set the tax rates as they see fit.  Some places have done that…..and they are in worse shape now than they were.

Meeting adjourned at 7:20pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.