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2019-20 Budget Negotiations – Round One

The Board of Commissioners met at the new Ramseur police department headquarters on Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 6 p.m. for the first round of negotiations on the 2019-20 fiscal budget. It was an interesting meeting in several ways.

For one thing, the typical contempt and discourtesy some members usually direct at their peers  in public was conspicuously absent. These people acted as if they like each other and know how to work together like adults, something we rarely see at better attended meetings. The video below runs about two hours and forty minutes, and covered budget requests from every department that our tax dollars fund.

Mayor Shaw began by pointing out that we currently have a fund balance of 1.5 million dollars in the bank. The proposed budget of just under $745,000, prior to any changes made during the meeting, would leave a little over 50% of the fund balance untouched. Continue reading “2019-20 Budget Negotiations – Round One”

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Can The Venue For A Public Meeting Legally Be Changed Less Than Six Hours Before The Meeting Is To Take Place?

The following message was sent out by email from the Town Clerk at 12:30 p.m., Thursday, 16 May 2019.

Good Afternoon,

RCC has expressed concerns for class this evening. So to work with their schedule, we will be holding our budget workshop at the new Police Department. Meeting time is 6 pm see you then.

Thanks,

Bobbie Hatley
Town Clerk/Finance Officer Continue reading “Can The Venue For A Public Meeting Legally Be Changed Less Than Six Hours Before The Meeting Is To Take Place?”

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Remarks To Randolph NAACP, 11 May 2019

I was asked to post a copy of my remarks to the local NAACP chapter this past Saturday. I spoke to tell my side of a complaint that Grant Cheek, a Ramseur Town Commissioner, filed against me with that organization. He spoke to them at their regular meeting last month. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a copy or a recording of his remarks to compare.

On 10 November 2015, Grant Cheek was elected to a seat on the Ramseur Board of Commissioners and was appointed to “head” Ramseur’s water and sewer department. That same year, I ran and lost a race for mayor of Ramseur against Danny Shaw.

By about February of 2016 the position of water-billing clerk had become vacant and Commissioner Cheek began volunteering, doing that job, until a replacement could be found. Eventually his peers on the board took action, first voting to compensate Mr. Cheek for his time, and later voting to hire him full time. Thus Grant Cheek became Ramseur’s water-billing/deputy town clerk, and a sitting commissioner in charge of the department he is employed within. Continue reading “Remarks To Randolph NAACP, 11 May 2019”

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“If we don’t do it and they do it, then we can’t do it.”

The quote in the headline above was spoken by Commissioner Grant Cheek at the May board meeting earlier this month. You can watch the full discussion in the video linked further down the page. The commissioners were discussing a resolution to approve a five month old trademark application. To understand the issue it might be helpful to look back about six months to last December.

It all started with an attempt to quash free speech when Adam Smith, self-appointed commissioner over the Internet, took it upon himself to file a trademark application for the town of Ramseur. Smith’s action was illegitimate, and possibly illegal, and should have resulted in his immediate censure if not removal from the board because he filed the application and was reimbursed the nearly $1,000 fee before at least some board members ever even heard about it. Continue reading ““If we don’t do it and they do it, then we can’t do it.””