I arrived at 1:30 PM that day. I walked completely around the location where the new North Shelby School was going to be constructed. I looked at everything. I took pictures of everything. I stood on the high ground and judged the backfill dirt would have to be higher that the house I aligned up with on the other side of the creek. I noticed who was there and who was not there.
I also inspected the truck load of soft dirt that had been dumped and spread for the school board to dig around in. Even the ground breaking was going to be phony. No ground was actually broken. It was more like the School Board was playing in a sandbox than breaking ground for construction. I even inspected one of the ten shovels used for the groundbreaking ceremony. The shovel was made in the USA. I was glad of that. I took a picture of the shovel label. Mostly because there were some that were watching everything I did.
Later I learned the shovels would be taken back to the CCS shops and locked up until the next groundbreaking ceremony. It seems CCS employees that sometimes use shovels on the job don’t get to use such top of the line tools. It struck me as ironic that Bully and his cronies would pinch pennies on tools their employees use and then turn around and waste $$Millions, much going to Roger Holland and perhaps others. No wonder many employees with CCS credit cards abused the cards on personal stuff. Monkey see-Monkey do I reckon. The big wheels were taking what they could get by with, so why not the peons (pee-ons)?
Of course there were the speeches and patting each other on the back. And the lies. Bully Glover even said he was as excited about the new North Shelby School project as when he was a boy on Christmas Morning. Bully also made a huge faux pas when he said “these people” which is a variant of “you people.” This is a historical negative way of speaking in generalities about another race or an assumed “class” of people. Bully might as well have used the “N” word.
I don’t think Bully had a clue about his faux pas, but seeing where the North Shelby School came from historically as previously described in this article, Bully should not have been so insensitive to so many in the group he was addressing. I understand being insensitive to others is the main characteristic of being a Bully, so Bully was just being himself.
All in all, the speechifying was basically the whole group just patting themselves on the back and talking about what a long way they had come and how much teamwork it took. Of course those like me that had observed the way the CCS Board had avoided doing anything smart, the cover-ups of mistakes, the wastefulness of the whole thing had a different opinion.
In my opinion wasting $4.6 million taxpayer dollars is not acceptable. Hopefully the waste is limited to that $4.6 million. Experience shows that the waste will not be so limited. So folks, pay attention. This is an election year for the school board and Bully and two of his cronies are up for re-election. Stay tuned, run for the school board, get elected and send Bully, Kathy Falls and Rev. Donnie Thurman, Jr. home for good.