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
