First of all, Remember the Commissioners secretly selling the Cleveland County Hospital, Kings Mountain Hospital, Crawley Memorial Hospital, The Health Department, the Mental Health Building, Cleveland Pines Nursing Home and every other County owned health care facility at the fire sale price of $100 Million? Ever wonder where that $100 million went to??? I will tell you right now where that $100 million did NOT go. The $100 million never went to the rightful owners of the healthcare facilities–you and me and the rest of the citizens and taxpayers of Cleveland County.
Also, remember the quarter of a penny in a sales tax increase the commissioners tried to put over on the county taxpayers that was on the ballot November 8, 2016 that voters rejected by a wide margin. That should put the citizens of Cleveland County on notice that the county is broke and trying to hide it. This article will not include the attempted sales tax increase as it was voted down. But remember that there are still major problems with county financing that the Crazy Commissioners are trying to hide from you.
Read on if you are interested in knowing about how the commissioners have wasted that $100 million and are borrowing $34 million more. If you don’t care, I suggest you go read the funny papers in the Shelby Star.
Now, back on track.
On Christmas Eve 2016 the Crazy Commissioners ran a legal announcement in the Shelby Star that a Public Hearing would be held on January 3, 2017 about the County going in debt another $34 million. This new debt is on top of the $22+ million in bonds spent on the LeGrand Center and Shelby Middle School. None of those bonds were paid off or even paid down a little by the $100 million Hospital sale.
On Christmas Eve (a Saturday) nobody reads the fine print in the legal section of the Shelby Star. Most people don’t read the Shelby Star in the first place. Then, on New Year’s Eve the Cleveland County School Superintendent sends out an email message to the school board members that the school district was financing the construction of the new North Shelby School by selling the school to the county as part of a $34 million debt package.
Nobody reads emails on a New Years Eve Saturday night just like they don’t read fine print legal notices in the Star on a Christmas Eve Saturday. So much for public notice. My conclusion here is the Commissioners and the School Superintendent were purposely hiding public notices from the public. Of course you can form your own conclusion on that.
Let’s concentrate for a moment on the legal notice and what the Crazy Commissioners are up to.
