To the Editor,

On July 2, 2016, county Commissioner Robert Belcher complained to your readers that the columns printed on your pages under my name were “rife with error and omission.” Objecting to my criticism of the Beaufort County commissioners, he further warned readers of your newspaper to “…be aware that everything that is printed should be read with a critical and questioning eye.”

I began writing about the lack of executive accountability and control at the Economic Development Commission in May 2011. My principal focus was the failure of the EDC’s executive director to create an effective program of economic development; the fact that far too much had been done for far too select a group of beneficiaries; and that the industrial park-industry-ready-building strategy was a failure. I blamed this on inadequate supervision by the county board, and recommended that the executive director be fired; the EDC be made a department of county government subject to the county manager; and that the industrial parks be liquidated.

In the spring of 2012, the executive director resigned. The EDC is now a department of county government, the QSII building was sold at 40 cents on the dollar, and the City of Washington wants to liquidate its interest in the Washington Industrial Park. The Chocowinity Industrial Park remains a vacant property.

In 2013, my letters began criticizing the proposal for a mega-jail. They argued that a rent-a-cell business model aiming at taking in prisoners from the State Misdemeanant Confinement Program and earning $40 per day in reimbursement fees per inmate received would not be feasible for a facility with inmate confinement costs exceeding $55 per day. Simply put, due to the scale of the project, the costs of constructing and financing a 350-bed jail in a county of 48,000 people was not a prudent investment. These letters also spoke out against the refusal of the county commissioners to submit the financing of this very controversial project to a referendum of the voters.

In November 2014, two new commissioners were elected. Both men honored campaign pledges to “Stop the Jail” and the issue finally was put to rest.

The most recent topic has been the mismatch of county revenues and county spending. Beginning in May 2015, I warned county commissioners, civic groups and the readers of the Washington Daily News that the budget for 2015-16 was set to deplete significant amounts of our cash reserves and would require a property tax revaluation designed to dramatically increase tax collections by 2018.

By June 2016, the county had run a $4 million deficit, raised taxes and fees by $2.5 million, received a windfall $575,000 from the state sales tax and is still on track for a second deficit year.

The revaluation will be painful.

If the commissioners would like to be portrayed in a better light, then they should do a better job, because, if a betting man were to choose between my analysis of their performance and Mr. Belcher’s, then he would choose mine and offer heavy odds in the bargain.

Warren Smith
Washington