Single shot voting for Willie McIntosh for Commissioner may be the fastest way to breakup the Mud Hens at DSS. That is enough for me to cast my single shot vote for McIntosh.
1. Cleveland County Commissioners led by Chairman Jason Falls and Vice Chairman Eddie Holbrook. You have to be very bad to tie with the DSS and CCS as being the worst agency in Cleveland County. Chose for yourself which one is the worst, if that is possible???
First of all, consider that the Commissioners, by new laws, could take over eliminating the Mud Hen rule at DSS and do what is necessary to bring about much needed changes there. But they don’t. And probably for good reason as the Commissioners share a Mud Hen with DSS in the person of Susan Allen who never sees a problem in the Commissioners doings as well as DSS doings, so the bad changing places with the bad still leaves the agency in a bad place.
The Commissioners are well known for throwing taxpayer money out the window on projects that will never pay for themselves. The Earl Scruggs Center, the LeGrand Center as well as the Foothills Shooting Range are the best example of projects that will forever require taxpayer dollars to keep the doors open. The hiring of commissioner family and friends at the examples noted above also pose ethical questions that the commissioners refuse to answer.
The commissioners also kept the property tax evaluation high for years after the economic downturn by refusing to re-evaluate property values until required by state law. Keeping the property values artificially high kept property taxes artificially high to the tune of $1.6 Million per year for at least six years. On top of that the commissioners were dipping into taxpayer reserves to keep up with their overspending ways.
Just about everybody coming before the commissioners with their hands out walked out with money. Folks asking for no interest loans got the loans, even though the county is not in the loan business. Carolina Medical tops that list with a $100 million loan to secretly purchase the Hospital and all the rest of County owned healthcare facilities. Even the Fair, with lots of money changing hands, got a no interest loan of $250,000 taxpayer dollars.
Besides the no interest $100 million loan the Carolina Medical folks got, selling the hospital was totally done in secret. The commissioners, who were already getting $1.4 million per year rent on the healthcare facilities basically gave away the taxpayer owned healthcare facilities in a long term no interest loan and what money the commissioners did get, they spent it instead of returning the money to the actual owners-citizens of Cleveland County. Apparently the commissioners never read Donald Trump’s boom, “The Art of the Deal.”
Now that a whistleblower has tipped me off about alleged commissioner boondoggles and I asked for public records, the Commissioners have refused to provide those public records in defiance of North Carolina Public Record laws. So, not only have the commissioners been liars about county finances, they are crooks too. If not crooks about alleged boondoggles, the commissioners are certainly crooks by not abiding by NC Open Meeting and NC Public Records laws.
