Cabarrus Cheap Seats

Last Monday, Bob Carruth was elected Chairman of the Board of Commissioners. He has the second-longest continuous tenure on the board behind Coy Privette. That being said, he doesn’t need my advice, he didn’t ask for it, but he’s getting it anyway.

Cut Taxes

Yep, we need lower taxes; and when I mean “we” I mean those of us who still have most of our taxpaying left to do (age 40 and under). The previous leadership showed that lowering taxes today is pretty easy. All you have to do is pass a resolution. However, doing so while throwing fiscal discipline to the wind is not just unwise; but it is unfair to younger taxpayers that have to shoulder an unfair level of debt and whose hands are tied when we have Capital improvements to build. So, the board under the Freeman, Suggs, Freeman, and Fennel majority actually increased my taxes with their borrow and spend approach while the redirection of excess funds to a capital account at the last meeting lowered my taxes by offsetting future borrowing. Please keep up the good work by doing a little less of the former and a little more of the latter.

This is not an easy task; because it requires forethought, planning, leadership and constant vigilance for new ideas and practices to make government more efficient. Which brings me to my next suggestion.

Efficiencies in Government Committee

Your critics have a tremendous amount of free time and energy. As the Board’s new leader, you should set up a Committee which serves at the pleasure of the BOC, to work with County Management which will identify inefficiencies in county government and compose practical and detailed plans to alleviate the inefficiencies. Of course, I would strongly suggest putting Harold Smith on the Committee as he has already offered his services at minimum wage to help John Day balance the budget. There are others who never seem to be without an opinion at all of the apparently recent failings of the Board of Commissioners. It would be a sign of leadership if you could channel all of their bloviations into something productive.

50-year-projects don’t fit into 6-month Timeframes

In my research on the “Jail Blame Game” post, I was astonished to find out how much had already been decided about the jail before you had made it into the majority at the end of last year. You would think from the recent behavior of Coy Privette’s that you, Former Chair Carpenter, and Joni Juba thought this new jail up all on your own. I think it would be a great exercise at the next workshop to go through each of his decisions over the past five years on the board and give him the chance to reconsider them. It would be fair and I’m sure that Coy wouldn’t mind explaining what he was thinking back then.

For future projects, you should get better project planning out of the staff than the previous boards did. I never once saw a Gantt chart detailing what would happen when with this jail; but that may have been a political calculation. At any rate, future capital projects will span the terms of plenty of board members, making the Chair and each Board member more accountable fo the decisions made would go a long way to avoiding fiascos like the Jail Debacle of 2005.

The Buck Stops Here

Harry Truman was famous for the sign on his desk making it clear where accountability resided in his office. Previous leadership seemed to enjoy blaming the County Attorney or the County Manager that they hired for whatever went wrong. Harold Smith suggests that City and County managers use powers of subterfuge to manipulate elected officials. It would go a long way to delineate differences in leadership styles if you would own the decisions made by the BOC under your leadership and that of the past buck-passers.

Get the word out

The local news doesn’t do a good job of explaining the challenges and decisions made by local government. They seem to enjoy rousing public meetings and officials losing their cool; but we rarely get a glimpse into the earlier planning stages. For example, The Independent Tribune completely feel down on the job of informing residents of Downtown Concord of the scope and size of the Jail project. This information was public knowledge in 2001 and the papers didn’t report on it well enough. Unless it’s Aunt Millie’s church bake sale or someone yelling a lot at a public meeting - the papers don’t seem to want to report it. You should work with the County manager to get more outlets for information besides sections of the paper nobody reads and cable channels that nobody watches.