Candidate Q & A Session
2018 CANDIDATE QUESTION AND ANSWERS
You wanted answers from our candidates, here is what they have to say.
Each candidate was notified by email about a question and answer session. Here is a copy of the email sent to each candidate in our county that are running for office.
Copy of Email
Dear Candidates,
As we have mentioned in earlier emails, we would love to have you participate in our citizen question and answer session. Below is a list of questions that the citizens of Beaufort county and Eastern North Carolina wanted to pose to our candidates to get a better understanding of their thoughts on issues.
We would love to hear your thoughts on the topics. The questions and answers you give will be posted on the Beaufort County GOP website, Facebook, and Twitter. Please send email responses questions and answers to: [email protected]. If you chose not to respond, we will indicate that you chose not to respond and allow the citizens to make up their own mind as to why you did not respond.
Thank you for your participation.
Beaufort County GOP
Candidates and their answers
The four candidates listed below did not respond to our email. For more
information you may contact them personally or with the information that
is posted on this site.
Frankie Watters Ernie Coleman Charles Earley
County Commissioner Sheriff NC Senate District 3
Sarah Homes
2nd District Court Judge
Running for county Commissioner
Tandy Dunn
Running for County Commissioner
Question: Do you support a wind/solar ordinance to establish setback and buffer requirements to protect the property of adjacent owners and bonding requirements on solar and wind developers to protect Beaufort County taxpayers for cleanup cost?
Answer: We have a solar ordinance already, if you can find a copy of it. I support regulation in this area if needed. Setbacks are important. I also believe any ordinance should include provisions for end of life cleanup for the solar panels.
Question: Do you support allowing concealed carry by qualified and trained county employees to help deter attacks at county buildings?
Answer: Qualified and trained county employees should be allowed to conceal carry. Instead of Gun Free Zones we need to have signs that say Somebody Is Armed. Our employees have the right to protect themselves at work just like they do at home.
Question: What specify steps would you take to cut county spending?
Answer: First we need to stop having a continuation budget. The budget should be based on what we have to have to support our programs. No department has been asked to cut back on anything. Contracts should be read and discussed completely in a regular public meeting before being awarded. We need to seek bids properly, not just awarding a contract to the same people who wrote the bid proposal, or for those proposals written so only one company can bid on it. I would also look at what we are spending money on. There is no need to buy $4,500 palm trees, or to pay rent on office space when we have space available in county owned buildings. Spending $4.7 million dollars in networked water meters that only have a ten year life span is ridiculous. The vendor should be required to insure the network is not abused and held liable if it is. There needs to be better oversight of the spending. Policies, procedures, and guidelines should be developed and adhered to when spending money. We have to get control of health care cost spending in the Jail.
Question: Will you continue to raise my taxes and fees?
Answer: Short answer: NO! I will do everything I can to lower taxes and fees. Fees are just another tax. We need to be finding ways to raise our tax base. Winterville, in Pitt County, became a bedroom community to Greenville, we can do it here too. Our Economic Development is a disaster. We need to bring in good businesses, with good paying jobs. More importantly, we need to create and foster a business environment that helps existing businesses. No special favors should be given to any business but what is done for one should be done for all. We need to be viewed as “business friendly” by cutting taxes for all businesses and reducing regulations, particularly in the Planning Dept. (permits).
Question: Will you pledge more debt to this county?
Answer: I pledge to do everything I can to cut our debt, reduce spending, and grow our county without riding the backs of our taxpayers. I will not vote for any new debt without approval by a vote of the people.
Question: Will you adhere to present NC open meeting laws?
Answer: It is the LAW. No more back room deals, Chickengates, or collusion in voting. Our meetings should be PUBLIC and only go into a closed door setting when required and in strict accordance with the statutes. And when that happens there should be no unauthorized persons making presentations to the board.
Question: Will you settle the open meeting law, lawsuit against the Beaufort County Commission?
Answer: It needs to be settled today. We need to stop paying a lawyer to drag this out. It should be over and done with. The lawsuit only asked for an order that the Board obey the law. It is ridiculous that the Board has spent $50,000 to fight that. My sense is that what they have done is stop the closed sessions and now they just cut the deals outside the public meetings. The people should see how the decisions are made.
Question: Do you feel we should have resources officers in our schools?
Answer: We need to tackle the root causes of the issues we face, and come to an understanding on how to resolve them first. We need to provide better resources to the schools to identify problem students and help them seek the counseling they need and in serious cases, removed from the traditional schools and assigned to a school with mental health resources and strong security, including armed teachers. I think that School Resource Officers are important in upper grades. We are going to have 14 SROs. The incident that precipitated us putting an officer in every school occurred in Florida where there was already a SRO in the school. So do we need two School Resource Officers in each school? Is two enough? I think that having “qualified” teachers with guns in the school might be part of the answer instead of the knee-jerk reaction we have taken. One SRO can cost up to $97,000. Instead of hiring officers that see students as criminals, schools can use that money for real school resources — mental health workers and restorative justice practitioners, to name a few — who build students up rather than push them out. The main thing that is needed for safer schools is a partnership between all stakeholders, including parents and volunteers. Security plans for each school should include a group of stakeholders, including parents, which assess the needs, designs the plans, and then monitors it for each school. SRO’s may play a role, but just assigning them to a school is poor planning.
Question: Do we have monies to train resource officers? If not, where would funds come from?
Answer: The state gave our county $133,000 for school resource officers. This money should be used to provide the proper training first. Additional grant money should be found by the school system and the Sheriff’s Office to help fund the positions. A SRO is not the same as a regular law enforcement officer, they are dealing with a different clientele and with the school system. They need specialized training. There is a one week school that has to be taken at the North Carolina Justice Academy in Salemburg for School Resource Officers. There is also a 32 hour class that is taken online. To get a “Professional Certification” the officer has to take a total of 400 hours at the NCJA. This “Professional Certificate” is NOT a requirement to be a SRO. We need to get the policy/law changed that allows all of these classes to be taken at our community college. This would save us a considerable amount of money.
Question: Should we have more or less commissioners or are seven enough?
Answer: There is nothing wrong with the amount of commissioners we have. What is wrong is how we elect them. There are currently three positions available in the upcoming election. You should be able to cast three votes because the three that win will be the commissioners making the decisions for the county, not just the one person you voted for. We should not have limited voting. Top three still win the position, but the public would be able to vote for their three, and not ONE.
Question: What does conservative mean to you, and how does it affect your stand on issues?
Answer: Being conservative means lower taxes and smaller government in strict adherence to the U. S. and N. C. Constitutions. Being a conservative is having a moral compass that guides your decisions. Prudence in government spending and debt. Making decisions after carefully and openly examining the issue. Being a conservative means protecting the inalienable rights of CITIZENS, including the right to bear arms. Being a conservative mean eliminating corruption in government, equal treatment of all individuals and businesses in an environment in which business can grow.
Stan Deatherage
Running for county Commissioner
Question: Do you support a wind/solar ordinance to establish setback and buffer requirements to protect the property rights of adjacent owners and bonding requirements on solar and wind developers to protect Beaufort County taxpayers for cleanup cost?
Answer: I support a wind solar/ordinance, crafted and voted on by a majority of the county commissioners, offered to the public via public hearing(s), and then voted on by the county commissioners. How I vote on said ordinance shall be determined by the language of the ordinance, and feedback rendered by the public at the public hearing(s). If the ordinance, approved by a hearing of the public, is poorly written, with the subsequent poor administration, it will not get my vote.
Question: Do you support allowing concealed carry by qualified and trained county employees to help deter attacks at county buildings?
Answer: Absolutely; I will stand in support of a well armed capable, qualified public when it is necessary; however, I also would also like to see all "Gun Free Zone" signs taken down immediately.
Question: What specific steps would you take to cut county spending?
Answer: It is complicated, so I offer these 3 broad solutions that always worked for this Conservative in my 18 years as a county commissioner. I shall continue to wage: baseline budgeting, prudent policy and vigilant oversight of all government services.
Question: Will you continue to raise my taxes and fees?
Answer: If elected, in my four years as a county commissioner, it is my promise to not only NOT vote to raise Beaufort County citizens' "taxes and fees", but to advocate and fight to cut all wasteful spending, and move to broadly, and fairly cut taxes in each of these four succeeding years that I serve at the public's pleasure, until we reach a manageable level of government's confiscation of the public's wealth. Currently, our county government is poorly managed, with no reasonable right to force, by police power, the confiscation of any more of the public's wealth.
Question: Will you pledge more debt to this county?
Answer: No; there is far too much debt on the books now after these last 4 disastrous years when we had a so-called Republican majority.
Question: Will you adhere to present NC open meeting laws?
Answer: Without fail as I advocated for all my previous 18 years served. In 16 of those 18 years, Commissioner Richardson (16 years served with me), and I kept our fellow commissioners out of that proverbial backroom, where these Democrats and nominal Republicans have, alternatively, cut so many awful deals, disadvantaging their supposed constituents at many junctures. As you might can surmise, we were not always successful, but, at least, we were not in those "back rooms" with them as they conveniently avoided the antiseptic sunlight of good governance.
Question: Will you settle the open meeting law, lawsuit against the Beaufort County Commission?
Answer: Immediately without fail, but, we will need a majority to accomplish this rightful initiative.
Question: Do you feel we should have resources officers in our schools?
Answer: I would approve of the level of Resource Officers prior the 2018/2019 fiscal budget, but NOT one resource officer more. The hiring of 8 additional resource officers will be a huge and unnecessary ongoing expense, and, along with the unthinkably stupid expense of 4.7 million dollars borrowed for virtual meter reading, may well be the dumbest expense of these sophistic county commissioners in just this one year.
Question: Do we have monies to train resource officers? If not, where would funds come from?
Answer: There is plenty of money awash in the Sheriff's budget to train what resource officers we truly need.
Question: Should we have more or less commissioners or are seven enough?
Answer: I have long advocated for a return to 5 commissioners, putting more power in the hands fewer commissioners, and, thereby, forcing a greater responsibility upon the public to elect smarter more qualified commissioners.
Question: What does conservative mean to you, and how does it affect your stand on issues?
Answer: Adopting a Conservative philosophy of governing is the knowledge that our nation, our state of North Carolina and our county of Beaufort is all separate, but near equal parts of a cohesive pact within the construct of our Constitutional Republic. A true Conservative governs by well understanding the unwavering Conservative principles of limiting government's reach into the freedoms that are allocated to each of us by God, and, when forced to govern our fellow men and women, we justly and fairly decide for those People we represent by abiding by the purpose and promise of United States Constitution, as it was written and strictly intended by our Founders. Furthermore, as Conservatives, we believe that government is best representative of our Founder's wishes when it is local, and that it be limited, and that the legislative branch of all levels of government should remain the most powerful of any and all co-equal branches.
Running for NC House
Keith Kidwell
NC House District 79
Question: What does conservative mean to you, and how does it affect your stand on issues?
Answer: Being conservative means to stay within the bounds of the NC and Federal constitution. Plain and simple.
Question: Will you address better defining open meeting laws and the enforcement of those laws?
Answer: After reading the open meetings law for NC, I believe the law is fairly clear. If someone violates the law they should be penalized as prescribed under the law. See NC GS 143 Article 33C.
Question: Will, you finally lower state taxes and stop using deception?
Answer: Since I have not served in government this question as worded would not seem to apply to me. With that said I am against tax increases.
Question: What is your biggest concern for Eastern NC?
Answer: JOBS!
Question: What positive changes would you like to make?
Answer: Reduce government regulation, taxes, better use of current tax dollars, return to a strictly constitutional government.
Question: Do you feel we should have resources officers in our schools?
Answer: I believe the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The least expensive way to handle this would be to allow teachers and school employees who choose to do so to carry concealed weapons at work, with proper ongoing training.
Question: Do we have monies to train resource officers? If not, where would funds come from?
Answer: See above answer. Also, we need to harden our schools. There is a great FREE program from the NRA that assesses the school and gives suggestions on how to accomplish this.