Would You Spend your Money This Way? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Sometimes people do not understand what their elected County Commissioner or Senator or House member are supposed to do. These elected officials pass some laws having to do with criminality and public nuisances. That is only a small part of most elected officials activities. Mostly, they spend money and decide how to spend money. Sometimes they spend it wisely and sometimes they spend foolishly.

    Money is one of the most important ingredients in life. Without money to provide basic necessities for ourselves and our family both we and our families can be very unhappy. With an adequate supply of money both ourselves, our families and our friends tend to be happy and cooperative.

    Not having enough money is one of the major causes of divorce and broken families. What is enough money is a another question. Some of us can live on a small amount happily. Some of us need more money. Some of us spend money wisely and some waste money. There are an infinite number of ways to waste money. Those who waste the most can make convincing arguments (mostly to themselves) about how responsibly they have managed their money.

    Many people without the amount of money they believe they need to live comfortably will lie, cheat, steal and murder to obtain it. There are those who are in denial, contending that money does not matter. Even these people need and use money regularly.

    Back to elected officials. We delegate them to provide certain things for us like law enforcement, restaurant inspections, building inspections, fire protection, etc. We have empowered our elected officials to forcibly take money from us. If we do not pay taxes promptly or willingly we have given them the police power to take it from us, sell our property and even send us to jail.

    Elected officials are very important to our happiness. They control the amount of money we have to provide for ourselves and our families with what is left over after we pay taxes.

    We expect our elected officials to protect our money, spend it wisely, manage it, and to only ask for the absolute minimum to provide services. All governments in the United States do this with an annual budget. Counties, cities and state governments must balance the budget. They do this by collecting taxes equal to the amount of money they spend. The Federal government is another story. They spend far more money than they take in. To fill the gap they both borrow and print money.

    County commissioners are responsible for the efficient operations of the county. They should not buy things when they can be repaired. They should not replace things until they are worn out. They should make sure county property is adequately maintained to provide for a long and useful life.

    While Beaufort County has made great strides in the management of money and property during the past 15 years, we have a long way to go.

    The county allocates large sums of money to various departments and leaves them on auto pilot until the next budget year. Each years budget is done by adjusting the prior year without regard to many of the changes in operations. This kind of broad brush budgeting without a line items means that the amount of money spent can only grow with time. This method means that commissioners who only deal with increases to the budget never get the opportunity to examine departments in detail and certainly do not provide oversight. Moneys for things that are no longer needed can easily be used to purchase services and things that may or may not be needed but were never budgeted.

    One example of poor budgeting has already been decided this year. Alan Jordan will not be sheriff after the November elections. He will only be sheriff for about 5 months of the full year. He submitted a budget with several expansion items. The suggestion was made not to purchase these items nor to fill vacancies until the unknown new sheriff is in office. The reason was because the new sheriff may want to do things differently and he should be accorded that courtesy by the commissioners. That suggestion was defeated. So now Jordan can spend the money and the new sheriff will be forced to come to the commissioners with his requests about how to spend money differently. Hopefully we will get a new sheriff who is a better manager than Jordan and he will save us some money.

    Handling personnel costs is a big deal. Beaufort county has about 300 employees who cost us about 12 million dollars each year. We do not have a time clock system except for about 25 employees. There are many advantages to modern time clock systems. People get paid for what they do. Some employees stay over to get their work done. Some employees are cutting corners, coming in late, taking long lunches, and leaving early. Being able to accurately manage sick days and vacations would be helpful. The present system is hand written on paper. There is no way to accurately audit time to be sure all is accounted for. It is a good buddy system. A motion was made to install a modern personnel time keeping system. It was soundly defeated. Let us do some figuring. Say 100 of those 300 employees manage to come in late, take a long lunch and leave early. Let us say that amounts to 20 minutes each day. That comes to about 83 hours per year per employee or 8,300 hours at $15 per hour or $124,000. The system estimated high cost is $120,000. Did these commissioners do their job? They are costing the taxpayers money instead of protecting your money.

    Beaufort County has several departments that are over staffed. Bringing this up at commissioner meetings is a political hot potato. Some commissioners go to those departments and promise to save their jobs. They do not care about protecting your money. To them there is a political advantage and they use it. A suggestion was made not to fill vacancies during the coming year unless the Board of Commissioners gave their approval. This has the advantage of removing politics from the process, requires the county management to analyze each situation as to need and provides the opportunity for the county to rearrange work, jobs and duties for maximum efficiency. That suggestion failed. Did these commissioners look after your interest and try to save you money?

    Beaufort county commissioners need to do more oversight and zero based budgeting. Zero based budgeting means that every department has to justify every expenditure as a line item each year and commissioners would be more involved than they have been in the past with what goes on and what services are provided to the public. Commissioners can save one million dollars each year by applying good management practices. Are you interested, the majority of commissioners are not interested.
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