Beaufort County Taxes are Going Up Again | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post appears courtesy of the Beaufort Observer.

    During the February Beaufort County Commissioners meeting the County manager, Brian Alligood, took issue with those of us who think continuation budgets are bad things, maybe even evil.

    Continuation budgets are bad things because they allow our bureaucrats to be lazy. Even worse they prove pre-planning for a tax rate to increase. From my viewpoint as a conservative Republican who believes in lower taxes, smaller government and less regulation continuation budgets are proof that politicians are not doing their job of continually examining government spending and policy.

    Our continuation budgets are the brainchild of liberal commissioners whether Republican or Democrat. The most important thing elected commissioners do is set policy on spending and approve the annual budget.

    Somehow, the public trust is corrupted when commissioners fail to examine last years budget to see what we do not need and what can be saved. No one will ever convince me that we need identically the same thing we purchased last year plus a want list for the coming year. It does not work that way in my home or business. Yes, we purchase a lot of the same things but not all of the same things. Equipment purchases last many years

    Commissioner Stan Deatherage and I have put up a big effort to try to slow down spending. We presented a motion to cap spending the same as last year. The liberals voted that down. We presented a proposal to cut the budget by 5 percent across the board. That also failed. Do not look at what those commissioners say, look at how they vote.

    Spending has increased by more than three million per year for the past 3 years. There is already a rumor circulating that the insider commissioners plan a two cent increase this year. That is another 1.2 million dollars in spending.

    Taxes are too high in Beaufort County now. Many families are having a tough time. I can hear it now, two cents is nothing, that is only another $20.00. But that homeowner is now paying about $800.00 when you include the tipping fee, the fire tax and the general fund tax. Eight hundred dollars is a big hit to a $35,000 per year salary.

    During the budget workshop, during late January of this year, Commissioner Frankie Waters, took the position that Beaufort County is not spending enough money. He stated that historically Beaufort County had not spent enough money.

    This kind of thinking is directly from the depression of the 1930's. Many of our intellectual thinkers think that government has the obligation to spend enough money to make us prosperous. This goes with the economist Keynes thinking of the early 20th Century. That thinking has got the nation 22 trillion dollars in debt. That comes to $60,000 for every man woman and child in the United States. Now these Progressive Socialists in Beaufort County want to spend the county into the same kind of poverty.

    We need to stop our charity giving. But most commissioners believe they are satisfying their constituents when they donate tax money to charities. We are donating about $600,000 per year and that is one cent in taxes. I call it vote buying with public funds.

    Watch out for this trick this year. Commissioners increase spending and do not increase taxes. That works when they dip into the fund balance or county savings account. This can go on for several years until the fund balance or savings gets so low that taxes have to be raised. That is when you hear commissioners say "We had no choice, we had to raise taxes". The simple truth is taxes do not have to be raised if the commissioners did not spend the money. High spending causes high taxes.