School Super-intendent organizes a Power Play | Eastern North Carolina Now
The existing School Board should vote to put this project on hold until new Board is seated
BY: HOOD RICHARDSON
The July School building Progress Monitoring Committee meeting turned into a power play. Superintendent Cheeseman manipulated the meeting and a host of “very important Beaufort County and City of Washington Officials” into the position of providing de facto support for his one man show. The entire event was about showing us who the “Big Cheese” is in Beaufort County. These people showed up and listened. No one objected to anything, so they all became supporters of the “Big Cheese”.
There has been no vote by the School Board and the County Commissioners to create the Progress Monitoring Committee. What power does this committee have other than Cheeseman, Fake Frankie Waters and T. W. Allen to have seized power?
Cheeseman changed the meeting date from Thursday July 11 to Wednesday July 10. Normally there may be 4 to 8 observers in attendance. I estimate there were more than 25 highly distinguished officials present. There was the Mayor of Washington and at least one council member, several School Board members sitting in the audience, the County Manager and Finance Director, County Commissioners John Rebholz and Randy Walker. Also present were two members of the self-appointed Progress Monitoring Committee consisting of Fake Frankie Waters, and Cheeseman. The third member, T. W. Allen was noticeably absent. So, Cheeseman took it upon himself to chair the meeting. Terry Williams, Vice Chairman of the School Board, sat beside Cheesman but did not participate in the meeting other than that he was present. Another message from Cheeseman that he is in charge.
Cheeseman announced that the maintenance and technology office complex fronting on Pennsylvania Avenue would not have to be demolished after all. Another site for the storm water pond is being selected. My estimate is we avoided another 5 million dollars in expense.
On que, Anita Radcliffe, Finance Director, for Beaufort County announced that the money for this project would flow thru Beaufort County and that her sources had told her the proper time to do a budget ordinance was after the job is bid. There are a lot of half truths and miss information in the above sentence.
Fake Frankie Waters and the Beaufort County Management staff, until now, never admitted the money flows thru Beaufort County government. The budget thing is smoke and mirrors. Everyone who does big projects like this knows the budget is a constantly changing thing as various problems and designs are resolved as we work toward awarding the bids. A final budget ordinance is required by law before construction begins. The process Mrs. Radcliffe described is the one I seriously object to because it means a budget will be presented to the Commissioners with the demand that it be approved that night it is presented with no examination of alternatives or what the improvements to education will be.
The process of passing all grant money thru the Board of County Commissioner allows Commissioners to involve the public in having a say in these projects and to ensure the money is not being wasted. If it is deemed wasted or misspent, the Beaufort County Taxpayers have to raise the shortage and give it back to the grantor. The Board of Commissioners has a fiduciary responsibility for this money and all money passing thru the County Government. We have a say in the quality of education because we tax our citizens to fund the schools.
Fake Frankie Waters, thru his ignorance and ego, took the Commissioners out of this control loop when he violated the open meetings law by meeting with Superintendent Cheeseman and T. W. Allen and formed the Progress Monitoring Committee without a vote of the Commissioners and the School Board. This put Cheeseman in charge because Fake Frankie Waters and T. W. Allen are ignorant of how our form of government works or the school constructions process.
Cheeseman announced that three options were presented to the School Board last night at the School Board Meeting having to do with the school plans. It is not known what these options were about. He said there are copies and sketches. He made none of these available to anyone. Most importantly, he did not discuss the alternative grade structures that could be a part of this project. Nor did he explain which option would have the most/least busing.
It is hard to tell what the construction schedule is because of various qualifying statements made by Cheeseman. It looks to me like the rush is on for the present School Board to box in the Board that will be elected during November of this year. A new Board could muzzle Cheeseman and take an objective look at this entire project. The "options" should be a part of the school board members' election campaigns.
The situation today is that one man, Cheeseman, is making all the decisions. We are building a consolidated school for as many as 1,000 pre kinder garden thru 3rd grade students at time that consolidated schools are known failures. No one, the School Board or Cheeseman, has presented to anyone the (education) benefits to be derived from spending these 52 million dollars. To date there is no written documentation available to the public about any part of this project.
This project is an example of what The Supreme Court of the United States ruled against (the Chevron case) a few weeks ago. That is allowing bureaucrats and egotistical elected officials to seize power, make rules and ignore democratic government. It is easy for Cheeseman, Fake Frankie Waters and T. W. Allen to ignore the public when they are backed by a majority of members of the School Board and Commissioners who are ignorant of democracy and lazy.
This project should be put on hold until after the new school board is elected in November.
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Stan
You are quick to call slander on people that call out Hood or yourself. Why not call out slander when people comment on TW ALLEN or Frankie? We all know this is a one sided narrative this blog post prints. Have you stopped to ask yourself how much money this grant will put into the county? Oh yea you and Hood would like Beaufort County to not change at all. |
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Proper financial management of this $52 million project means we need ALL of our elected school board members AND county commissioners to be fully engaged, not mere bystanders. There is too much taxpayer money invovled here for any of them to take a powder. Cheeseman has little or no experience in this area of building schools. I guess that is why he is so desperate for this one for his resume. He can probably paper over a boondoggle. The taxpayers, on the other hand, will be stuck with it when he moves on.
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When Hood gets called out he calls everyone a liar or Rino.
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The majority on the school board are useful idiots for liberal and power hungry superientant Cheeseman, and that is the crux of the problem. That particularly goes for T.W. Allen, Eltha Booth, and Mack Hodges, all of whom are little more than bench warmers.
The county commission has financial oversight of this construction, and it is time for that entire board to be responsible public officials and exercise it, since the school board majority has abdicated its role and ceded their role to Cheeseman. |
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But not you HR. You are not on the school board. Maybe you should run?
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Is it Prediegirl or Bidengirl? She uses the same demonization tactics as the Biden Democrats, accusing Richardson of the same things that the Biden Democrats try to falsely accuse President Trump of doing. She is high on personal villification and very light on actual issues.
I guess when you don't have facts on your side, personal vilification is the only thing you have left. |
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Prendiest Girl. Your are a liar. But that is the way Democrats and RINO's play.
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Cheeseman is a control freak. He is the reason we are losing teachers because teachers are afraid of him. He is controlling this whole school construction thing to create a resume item for himself for when he seeks to move up to a larger, better paying school system. The reason this school is being built in the manner it is has everything to do with Cheeseman's resume and nothing to do with education in Beaufort County. It is shameful that we have such pathetically weak leadership on both the school board and the county commission that they are letting him play them like a violin.
We need ALL of our elected officials on both the school board and the county commission to engage on this issue, something they should have done a long time ago. Most of them are just sitting there like bumps on a log and rubberstamping whatever Cheeseman wants. |
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Prendiegirl: If you believe that Commissioner Richardson is in any way corrupt in governing all these many decades, you have outed yourself, by projection, to be a corrupt person, whose opinion, as an alias, means very little except to other corrupt people.
So let this be a warning Prendiegirl, if you continue to slander good people, well known to all other good people here on this publication or elsewhere, you will lose your alias status, then you can slander the Good Commissioner under your real name ... How would that work for you? As someone who has served with Commissioner Richardson for 22 1/2 years, we both know well what corruption looks like here in Beaufort County, and neither one of us have one iota of that taint upon us ... Just the scars as those that stand strong the best we can between the honest good folk of Beaufort County and the corrupted dishonest that are far too many in positions of power. |
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Hood, The only person I see trying to seize power is you. You are the only corruption I see going on in Beaufort County. Wasn’t it your racist self who called people Monkey & Taco Mamas? Time to go Hood. I see a rocking chair with your name on it.
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You are missing the 9 member board direct the one superintendent. Plus democracy is all of us.
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When we spend public funds, they shold be spent efficiently, not in a half-assed manner to bolster a bureaucrat's resume.
As to T.W. Allen, I suggest you watch some school board meetings. Sometimes you even wonder whether he is awake, except when Cheeseman leans over to instruct him on what to do. He is a complete joke, as are Mack Hodges and Eltha Booth, who also rarely open their mouths on anything. All three are Cheeseman puppets.