At the Cleveland County Commissioner’s Meeting last night, Chairman Susan Allen announced that all County Schools were closed, there were still ZERO confirmed cases of Coronavirus-COVID-19 in Cleveland County and that 3,000 meals had been given out by Cleveland County Schools.
On a normal school day, over 15,000 students would be fed by the schools. With over half of schools getting free lunches. Now that all the meals were free, only 20% of the 15,000 students were fed by CCS.
No word was given on where the other 12,000 meals went to. Most will likely go to the County Landfill. Wednesday, today, meals will be delivered by the CCS school buses. Is this waste, on top of waste? Or what from=m the CCS “Nutrition” Department? Long associated with waste and improper charges on School Credit cards. Previous reports since CCS went to prepackaged food instead of food home-cooked at schools’ state that lots of food goes into the trash anyway now. The kids just don’t like it.
All the while the Commissioners brag on CCS for what a good job they are doing, with not a word about wasted assets and poor food, service planning. A bad sign as all the Cleveland County Schools are responsible for now is food service. Education is out until further notice.
Also, During Citizens Recognition at the Commissioner’s meeting, I reminded the Commissioners about problems with the lack of proper preventative maintenance on HVAC equipment at Shelby High School and Burns High School. Including mold at Burns. I was about to offer my suggestions, after 42 years of Engineering Experience, to save tons of money, when Chairman Susan Allen blurted out “Your time is up.” And it was another grand example of poor judgement and waste by not only CCS but the Commissioners too. The Commissioners have purchased an electronic timer that they set next to public speakers, that counts down to ZERO in seconds. The Commissioners are bound and determined to not listen to good ideas from the public even ONE SECOND more than the law requires then to. Even though the meeting was short and there were no other speakers in attendance. Or anybody else, for that matter, because of the Coronavirus. The Commissioners also did not reschedule their two public hearings due to the public not being present in this national emergency.
So, I spoke at the Public Hearings as being AGAINST the Commissioners spending $6 Million of all of the County’s taxpayer’s money to build a building and then give it to The City of Shelby. And threw in my suggestions for fixing the costly practice of not maintaining, not even changing air filters on county owned building air conditioning systems-that was causing poor performance and premature failure.
Words going in one ear and out the other, without hitting a brain cell in between. That is the story when members of the public, “the little people,” come to Commissioner’s Meetings. School Board Meetings and CCC meetings too.