Craven County Board of Commissioners Meeting 15 July 2013

CCTA WATCHDOG REPORT

Craven County Board of Commissioners Meeting 15 July 2013

Settlement of 2012 Taxes

Roughly $47 Million taxes were levied for 2012. 98.4% was collected, putting Craven County in the top 15% of counties in North Carolina in collection efficiency.

Assistance by the County Manager's Office.  

The two presentations discussed below were presented after the regular meeting of the Board, and the County Manager's Office very graciously provided me with the Power Point slides used. (I can present them at a CCTA meeting if you want more detail.)

Public Health Cost Containment Plan

Isn't it interesting how appropriate our study of The Marketing of Evil is? The plan presented is anything but "Cost Containment," though we all now recognize how words are systematically used to make bad things sound good.  Scott Harrelson, Director of the Health Department, gave the presentation. He started with a chart that showed that, over time, the county's share of the Health Department budget has gone down to about 22%. He then showed a chart that showed that "Clinic Revenues" are replacing the county tax dollars. Of course, "Clinic Revenues" are provided by Medicaid, Medicare, insurance, Grants, and a little from the patients, meaning, of course, that most of the revenue is gained on the back of some taxpayer somewhere. He then showed a chart that showed the federal taxpayer financial support was way the heck up at 47%! This is progress?

Then came the pitch for the Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). The first advantage listed on that slide was that the Defined Service Area could keep undesirable FQHCs out of our area. Meaning competition would be stifled. Great, huh?   Remind you of anything?   He then added to Medicaid and Medicare income the advantage that employees could pay off their taxpayer student loan debts by working off about $25,000 per year of their debt to the taxpayer by their service to the FQHC.   Wonderful, huh? Good for government employees and bad for taxpayers.

The FQHC would also get 340 B drug pricing. I guess that is good because it is high and not paid by the patient. Wow! How great is that?

Then the real kicker, base funding by the federal taxpayer is $650,000. But, Mr. Harrelson warns, that might not materialize. DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP!

Next Mr. Harrelson told the Board what they would have to do:

            Provide $22,000 to the grant writer. A great grant writer will do it for that!

            Set up a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization as a co-applicant for the public entity application. (The Health Department will also be a co-applicant). I think I am beginning to hate "501(c)(3)" as much as I hate the word, "grant."

            Set up a separate board to oversee services under the FQHC.

Bottom line...

EVERY MEMBER OF OUR CRAVEN COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS VOTED TO PROCEED WITH THE PLAN AND APPLY FOR THE FQHC CERTIFICATE OF NEED.

WOW! ISN'T THAT WONDERFUL?

Now let me give you the real kicker. Before the meeting, I asked Mr. Harrelson if all this profit the county could make (like New Bern does on its electricity utility company) would make it feasible to "privatize" the venture. He said some localities in NC are doing that. The idea never got mentioned in the meeting. I guess staff is not ready for that.

Comprehensive Economic Development Strategic Plan   

I will say it surely is "comprehensive."

A presentation was made about this "compressive plan" by Kyle Talente, Vice-President of RKG Associates. No mention was made of North Carolina's Eastern Region, AKA Global TransPark or the potential to recover roughly $1.5 Million dollars of Craven County taxpayer's money to be used for economic development in our county. BUT there was a huge push for funding and staffing (up to 4 staff positions were mentioned, most sounding pretty high salaried).

After working hard to get County control of economic development within the County, and to get rid of the regional approach that had expensive staff and showed very little results, the Board of Commissioners appears to be bent on creating a similar situation again! Without even having received a written report from the consultants hired to make recommendations on economic development, and based on conversations with the consultants, and a slide presentation, they appear ready to buy this expensive venture hook, line, and sinker!

I also suspect, but don't know, that they will want to take the $1.5+ million received from departing NCER and put it into this new 501 (C) (3) joint venture with government and private entities. The consultant advised them to go slow and give a contract (any idea who wants it?) to a consulting firm to provide services until it would cost more to extend the contract than to directly hire staff.

The recommendations made under the title, "Workforce and Asset Development," are either already being done in Craven County or have already been tried and proven ineffective:

            Create a development site inventory- already tried out at Clarks. (This tends to be expensive, a waste of money, and it will be done FREE by a developer when the time is ripe for such a move to be economically feasible.)

            Build a shell building- Didn't we try this once? (Same criticism as the point above.)

            School to work connectivity- Already being done.

            Tie-in Community College- Already being done.

            Implement a business needs survey- Already being done.

The only thing new I saw was a formal existing business retention program. Good idea! Get tax and regulation off their backs! That works every time.

There is to be a meeting this evening at the Convention Center in New Bern of "stakeholders" to receive the same sales pitch as the Board of Commissioners got this morning. Everyone and his brother appears to be a

"stakeholder" except the taxpayer. How does that work? Even though three members of the Board of Commissioners are members of CCTA, so presumably they recognize our perspective as that of taxpayers, we have not been invited. Oh well, I've heard all I want to hear about it anyway. Our Board of Commissioners is tuning up to greatly enlarge government in two ways. So here we go again. And as Raynor points out, the economic development aspect could be handled by decent industrial/commercial real estate agents/brokers for FREE if the tax/regulation/transportation network/workforce elements were handled properly by government.

Respectfully Submitted,

Hal James, Watchdog Committee Chairman

Coastal Carolina Taxpayers Association

New Bern, North Carolina