Folks, if you’ve been doing your due diligence and reading my articles regularly, you will recall that I have correctly reported that YOU, the fool Cleveland County taxpayers, have been funding the American Legion World Series Baseball, Inc. to the tune of about$5,50,000 over the years. That I was recommending that YOU attend the 7th Inning Stretch in just a few days and have a big time. Attend the ALWS games too. You might as well, I said, since you are paying for it. And the games and ESPN and surely the Eddie Holbrook Gate too. YOU are paying despite all the years of lying by Eddie Holbrook and all the other Commissioners that taxpayer money was NOT footing the ALWS bill. But it was and right from the start. YOU paid for the two bus-loads going to Indiana and most everything else from then on. Including this year and even after Eddie Holbrook was disgraced and defeated in his $68,000 re-election campaign in 2018. And you are still paying until someone puts a stop to it.. Thanks to the nitwit Commissioners who do what County Manager Brian Epley tells them to do. And Epley was told by Eddie Holbrook, Susan Allen, Ronnie Whetstine and Johnny Hutchins what to do. And New Commissioners Doug Bridges and Deb Hardin were fooled into going along with it.
Now folks, guess what? YOU will probably be paying that $5,500,000 all over again. Title IX (9) it is called. The Commissioners and Cleveland County Schools have violated Title IX of the US Civil Rights Act. And YOU, the Taxpayers, are on the hook for it.
Title IX is a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. Apparently, CCS and Cleveland County discriminates against race, religion, etc., so why not sex too? Right?? The problem here is, despite all the lies, they are caught and have not been able to lie out of it. But they are surely trying, and trying hard.
It goes like this. CCS receives Federal Funding. CCS allows the Shelby High School Baseball Field to be used by the American Legion World Series, Baseball, Inc., under former Disgraced and defeated Commissioner Eddie Holbrook, while NOT providing a similar and EQUIVALENT facility for the Girls softball team at Shelby High School.
This issue and related and non-related cover-up issues are not new to CCS, the Commissioners and especially Commissioner Eddie Holbrook and County Manager Brian Epley. And other County Agencies like DSS, the Health Department, etc. Presently the Title IX violation investigation has been going on at the Federal level for about a year. DSS was sued and lost. The Commissioners, Epley, Health Department Director Dorothea Wyant and former county employee Sam Lockridge are under a Federal Lawsuit for sexual harassment and discrimination. CCC has too many complaints and lawsuits to describe in full in this article. Even the Federal Lawsuit filed by Willie Green against the City of Shelby and Rick Howell show how pervasive discrimination and defamation are in Cleveland County. All with direct or indirect ties to former Commissioner Eddie Holbrook and his push for cover-up, lies, perjury, corruption, self-dealing, conflicts of interest and who knows what else.
Besides the Catawba Casino renewal of interest, Eddie Holbrook and his reverse King Midas Effect, Massa Eddie has been implicated-as we speak-with perjury, destruction of public records and cover-up all the way down to the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. There in Charleston, Eddie Holbrook’s son Chad (The Baseball Coach) has been involved in a lawsuit over what appears to be criminal acts. That lawsuit generated subpoenas, etc. for records that Charleston Co9llege and the younger Holbrook said did not exist. Recently, very recently, the plaintiff got ahold of Chad Holbrook’s cell phone. A forensic dive into Chad’s cellphone found many conversations with Chad’s father, Eddie Holbrook. Where those records that were not supposed to exist were talked about and schemed over in a classis Eddie Holbrook cover-up maneuver. All conversations sealed with “Don’t tell anyone.” Apparently showing a full knowledge and comprehension that what they were doing was morally wrong, unethical and HIGHLY (felony level) illegal. Like I said, this is developing as we speak. Google Chad Holbrook and College of Charleston for more information.
If you go to google and look, you will find that Chad Holbrook is also claiming those discussions with his dad, Eddie Holbrook, were because of the many health issues, including two heart attacks that Eddie Holbrook had suffered from. Of course, that is either a lie that Chad Holbrook cooked up looking for sympathy or something Eddie Holbrook covered up in his re-election bid in 2018 where he spent $68,000 on-just to lose. Too many double-crosses, found out lies and Plantation Politics dirty political tricks had caught up with Eddie Holbrook as I have reckoned.
But, throughout all this stuff noted herein, the “No Bad Press” legacy of Holbrook’s terms on the Cleveland County Board of Commissioners, carried out by County Manager Brian Epley, has morphed into the “Don’t tell anyone” mentality the county now requires from its employees. All lies and corruption that have spread throughout the County agencies and the City of Shelby.
Now, back to Shelby High School Baseball Field, ALWS, Commissioners, Eddie Holbrook, the School Board, Title IX and the lawyers.
If you are a regular reader, you will remember that I have previously reported the waste, corruption, lies and cover-up related to SHS, CCS, ALWS and Title IX for years. Title IX requires schools to provide equivalent facilities for the different sexes. Since the ALWS, under Eddie Holbrook, was pouring $millions into the SHS boys baseball field and the girls were not allowed to use the field, CCS should have built equivalent facilities for the girls’ softball team. But Noooo. They wouldn’t even let the girls use the boy’s ballfield that $Millions had been spent on. An obvious Title IX violation.
Holbrook and CCS kept up their phony and false promises and lies to the girls’ softball team until somebody finally made the complaint to the right people. The Feds. And a Title IX investigation was initiated. The nitwits on the School Board (except for Danny Blanton) kept up the cover-up appearance of believing Superintendent Stephen Fisher that everything was OK. Head Nitwit Board Member Roger Harris even stated that it was “like a girls swimming team at Burns wanting equivalent facilities with the boys swimming team at Burns. Since there is no swimming pool at Burns, the girl’s complaint would be invalid.” (As I sat there listening to that bull-ony from Harris, I was wondering how in the world could voters in Cleveland County outside of Shelby and Kings Mountain ever vote for the fools like Roger Harris that they elected and re-elected to the school board? I still wonder about that and hope the 2020 elections will remedy the “fool” situation on the CCC School Board.) And Supt. Fisher was all the time telling the school board (what they wanted to hear) that their hot-shot expensive lawyers in Raleigh were on top of the Title IX situation and not to worry.
All the while trying to figure ways to get around their obvious Title IX violation. Things like busing the girls to another school’s ball field. Busing the girls over to the softball field at Cleveland Community College. Perhaps the new athletics plan at CCC originated out of a perceived cheap way of getting CCS off the hook for their Title IX violation.
The real problem with all that switcheroo stuff is the “equivalent” requirement. So much tax dollars and other funds have been poured into the Shelby High School Baseball field, that NOTHING in Cleveland County and probably the whole of NC schools ball fields compare with the Shelby High School’s baseball field. College fields included.
And now the kicker. Something bad for CCS and Cleveland County is coming down upon our heads. Or maybe I should say our pocketbooks. The CCS hot-shot high dollar lawyers in Raleigh have found themselves overwhelmed by the obvious Title IX violation regarding the CCS’s Shelby High School Ballfield situation, at the Federal Level in Washington, DC. So, they have hired, on Cleveland County Schools behalf, hot-shot higher paid lawyers in Washington, DC to save the political skins of the CCS School Board. And, the CCS school board is juggling the books to get around the fact that any contract over $100,000 has to get board approval. And they know that if all this comes out in a regular board meeting, I will surely report it.
Well, you dummy CCS school board members, I have found out and I am reporting it. Right here and right now. And dummy Commissioners, you are on the hook for continuing funding illegal enterprises. For whatever foolish reason that you continue to do so.
But folks, remember that the Commissioners have already run Cleveland County to near bankruptcy. They are planning to raise property tax revenue by reevaluating property at higher prices, raising the Sales tax rate a quarter cent and also enabling themselves to incur credit card type debt to support their foolish spending.
This is how the US Department of Justice summarizes Title IX:
Overview of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
On June 23, 1972, the President signed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §1681 et seq., into law. Title IX is a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. The principal objective of Title IX is to avoid the use of federal money to support sex discrimination in education programs and to provide individual citizens effective protection against those practices. Title IX applies, with a few specific exceptions, to all aspects of federally funded education programs or activities (Including Ballfield facilities). In addition to traditional educational institutions such as colleges, universities, and elementary and secondary schools, Title IX also applies to any education or training program operated by a recipient of federal financial assistance. The Department of Education has issued regulations on the requirements of Title IX, 34 C.F.R. § 106.1et seq. The Title IX common rule published on August 30, 2000 covers education program providers/recipients that are funded by other federal agencies.
So folks, there you have it. Former Commissioner Chairman Eddie Holbrook has stuck it to the taxpayers, the SHS girls’ softball team, CCS, the American Legion (for all the bad publicity) and just about everybody else. And County Manager Brian Epley is persuading the old and new commissioners to follow that same path.
The 2020 elections are coming soon. Holbrook’s clone commissioners Susan Allen, Ronnie Whetstine and Johnny Hutchins have chosen to drink the Kool-aide and perpetuate the corruption. So, if you want a change from corrupt government to good government, run good people against this band of crooks and liars and vote those good people into office. Three good people form a new majority and can immediately wield the big broom and sweep-clean the mess in county government.
Chad and Eddie Holbrook’s conniving communications related to a Federal Lawsuit here.