Cabarrus Cheap Seats

For the third and final Point/Counter-Point, I’m going to discuss the change in tone of the leadership of the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners. The fact that there was a two-page editorial explaining why the taxes were going up authored by one of the Commissioners in leadership speaks to the change in style - the previous leadership didn’t think they had to explain anything to anyone.

Point - Bob Carruth:

Those that take an interest in what happened really fall into one of three camps: the first group understood the what the county was facing going into this budget year, and although they do not like the fact that taxes had to be raised, they see it as a necessary evil; the second see this as an opportunity for political gain, either by accident, or by the intentional engineering of this situation. For these two groups, who make up a very small minority of the county, no explanation is necessary or needed. The largest group, however, that is owed an explanation, is the group of people in our county who wonder What Happened? I hope by the end of this article, I will show you the background of what led the county to this point, by pointing to several key events and decisions since 1998, all of which worked together to create this situation.

Counter Point - Coy Privette:

[County Manager John Day] lacks fiscal discipline…After this charade was conducted, we made the motion to set the tax rate the same as it has been this year: 53 cents. Of course, it was defeated by a 3 to 2 vote. If it had passed, it would have required County Manager Day and his staff to bring the budget in line with the 53 cents tax rate…Moody, one of our bond rating agencies, said that we fell below our 15% fund balance policy. According to the information from our Finance Department, we had set aside the ample funds. Why the discrepancy? Someone else will need to answer that….When the county manager along with Carruth, Carpenter, and Juba decided to drop the legal challenge on the water dispute, the county had invested some $75,000 in legal fees. More tax-payers money went down the “drain”.

Fact, well more general observation…Coy Privette takes advantage of the public’s general disinterest in local policy for the political gain of himself and his allies. The counter-point is a short compilation of quotes from his where he points the finger at someone else. Sure, he doesn’t mind being a “hands-on” guy when it comes to criticizing the County Attorney or parsing parliamentary procedure when it comes to budget resolution; but he’s willing to delegate discovering where $4 million dollars remained unaccounted for (from the Moody’s report) and not even pointing out where to start to making the substantial cuts needed to keep the tax rate at the level where he wanted to keep it.

His ability to obfuscate and delegate blame serve him well as one of the state’s oldest and most experienced politicians, but when under his leadership the county’s future looked pretty bleak. Here are some of the highlights:

1. The School Board had to nearly sue the Board of Commissioners to secure funding for urgently needed schools. This was after a number of stall tactics by the Board of Commissioners, including appointing a committee of community in 2003 to come to the same conclusion as a similar committee did five years earlier. Only after the threat of a lawsuit did the BOC show “the leadership” to adopt the per-lot school adequacy fee.
2. The County was involved in a lawsuit with the City of Concord over water access. The root of the problem was the stark difference in the development standards between the City and the County. The County refused to budge on important property-rights issues like requiring developers to make cul-de-sac roads in development large enough for fire trucks to enter. Commissioner Privette then has the guile in this latest article to criticize the current leadership for not following the $75,000 investment in legal fees to defend development standards that are out-of-line with the remainder of the community.
3. Illustration of the growth policy: Name three developers that were ultimately denied a request to make a major residential development in Cabarrus County.
4. There was no plan whatsoever for the construction of new schools beyond a year or two in the future. Commissioner Privette and his allies contend that “we have never denied the schools’ requests”; but they would never commit to a need that wasn’t immediate…making planning impossible.

While that all seems irreversible, leadership seems to be turning all of this around. The fact of the matter is that in nearly 200 days since the current leadership has come to power - there have been a number of positive developments:

1. The County has development standards more in line with the rest of the community.
2. The budget is balanced.
3. People for whom the taxes are a heavy burden are given a serious break on their tax bill a(quite curious how the previous leadership’s oft-mentioned appreciation of the hardship of least among us didn’t materialize into action)
4. A capital construction fund has been practically and prominently reestablished in the County’s fiscal policy - changing the financing of school construction from “borrowing indesperation” to “saving in anticipation”
5. The County is not being sued by (or even in mediation with) another elected entity within its own borders.

I’m not happy about the tax increase; but I’m even less happy when the people responsible for it won’t own up to it. However, I think that after this year - more of us will be watching.