Cabarrus Cheap Seats

When I saw the Cabarrus Neighbors today, I expected there to be a firestorm of condemnations of the Cabarrus County School Board from the protectors of “the taxpayers” (AKA “senior citizens and working families”, AKA “everybody”). Last month, Coy Privette, Harold Smith, and others weren’t slow to tell the Independent Tribune what they thought about Bob Carruth merely contemplating instituting new user fees for county services. The School Board actually approved higher student fees.

Read My Lips: No New Fees

However, when I read the article, I didn’t see a quote from any of the people that treated Bob Carruth like a piñata giving the same treatment to any school board members. I’ve been checking www.goharoldsmith.com, but there’s nothing.

Some of the fee increases were in the 56% range; but nothing.

They are collecting 4% more fees than they did last year. Doesn’t sound revenue-neutral to me. That can be construed as a tax-hike. Nope, nothing but the sound of silence from our “no new tax” crusaders.

Not one of them railed against the school board for being “out of touch with the working families and seniors of Cabarrus County”. Not a single one of them drew up a fictitious plan. I dug up papers going a week, and not one letter to the editor.

Did any of these fee critics speak up against these school fees at the school board meeting? It has been a mere month since they ganged up on Commissioner Carruth, did they spend all of their stamina in that “fight for the common man”? Or, is all of the talk against increased taxes just…um…talk?

A cynic would see this apathy towards the instructional fee increase as a sign that their opposition last month to the idea of user fees was largely political, and maybe even employing a little grandstanding while the public paid their 10 days of attention to the county budget.

Seriously, though

Personally, I feel it’s unfortunate that families have to pay out-of-pocket to fund something that is considered a constitutional entitlement. It’s a common complaint among transplants that they pay more fees here than anywhere else they lived. However, eliminating the fees would cost money. More money to the schools is not a priority of the gang that jumped Bob Carruth last month - they needed to form a committee to tell them the schools were overcrowded; and then only decided to follow the committee’s recommendation after the School Board threatened to sue the old Board of Commissioners.

Regardless of the rhetoric, I guess it only takes a month to figure out what causes people are really fighting for.