Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
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smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for
your support. You know me, I only work three hours
a day, as we determined yesterday, and so this was
quite out of the norm for me to be watching.
The Mecklenburg County Commissioners meeting ran about four hours or
so last night, and so I was watching it because
they were getting ready to vote on their two point
five billion dollar budget and that's a lot of money,
and it's got a property tax inse inate, and so
I wanted to hear what these commissioners had to say
for themselves. And I turn it on and I'm watching
and they do the you know, the proclamations the recognition
for public art. Public art, by the way, is taxpayer
funded art that is required in like all projects, you
got to do a one percent budget allocation for a project,
if it's a county project, one percent has to be
for public art. And so it's it's a way to
highlight all of the crap that gets purchased by whoever
it is that makes those purchases on our behalf with
our money, and then they decorate them all around town.
And in some unfortunate instances in the past, these art
installations have been honestly mistaken for garbage and have been
thrown out. So anyway, so I'm always curious about that
sort of thing. And then there are like the proclamations.
It's in case you weren't aware, did you know June
is Pride month. Yeah, so they did the Pride proclamation.
They did a proclamation.
Speaker 2: Oh what was.
Speaker 1: Trying to recall? There's a lot of proclamations. Anyway, they
ran through those, they brought people down to talk about
the proclamations, and then they brought down the final proclamation
people and it was gun Violence Awareness Month or day
or gun Violence Prevention Day or so anyway, there's another
proclamation against gun violence.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They were, yes, I know, like county commissioners taking a
bold stance against gun violence. So they have some people
there and they're talking about it. We're against gun violence.
We are too, Oh, everybody's against it. And then a
woman comes down and by the way, there was, as
far as I could tell, there were no media at
this at this meeting last night, because if there were,
I wouldn't have been the only person reporting on what
it was that occurred at the very beginning of the
meeting here during the proclamations, well about what it was
about a probably about a half hour to an hour
into the meeting, because you've got to sit through all
of that stuff before you get to the two point
five billion dollar spending plan. Anyway, so a woman comes
down and she identifies herself as Megan Hill, a CMS
art teacher, and things just seemed.
Speaker 3: I'm a public school art teacher at Register subsidy.
Speaker 4: And do you just confirmed you're here to speak to
the Gun Violence Awareness Month proclamation? Yes, okay, I apologize,
please continue.
Speaker 1: Yes, weird to a point.
Speaker 3: I am here to speak today because what pointun Violence
Awareness Month? As as a teacher, I witnessed the daily
impact that fear, trauma, and disinvestment have on our children.
We asked them to learn WHILESO preparing them to hide
in planes sight. We tell them to stay focused while
we fail to keep them safe. I've been teaching in
CMS for four years. I've been teaching for five and
I'm already exhausted from trying to stay afloat in the
system that keeps asking more and giving less. When I
came to Charlotte, I was excited to teach third grade,
and one of my most vivid memories though from teaching
those years, was being told to carry on as usual
after a student made a threat of violence at our school.
Ten of my seventeen students showed up that day. A facility, though,
would not have helped me in that moment, and it
would not help me now in my new classroom with
five gorgeous windows that face the front of the school.
No amount of training for this facility would really prepare
you for the moment that you might have to interact
with a child with a weapon.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know where she's going and what does
she mean by facility here? So I'm now I'm paying attention.
What exactly is this teacher's jam? Like's what's her game?
She's running here?
Speaker 3: Gun violence prevention is what would stop that child from
ever believing that a gun is something that would answer
their pain caused by the broken system. I teach in
Charlott's high needs schools, where we are under resource and
over policed, that imbalance is exactly what leads these situations.
We do not need a new training center. What we
need our social workers, nurses, school counselors, and trauma informed educators.
Speaker 1: Oh now I know what she means by facility. This
is the cub city people, the anti fat people.
Speaker 3: We need investments in literacy, nutrition, and stability. We need care,
not combat. Yet, when our schools are budging for lunch money,
you were quietly moving funding into a facility. Let's be clear,
that's not really a first turning to use for training center.
It's also being involved with militarized police subs things like that,
and this just feels dishonest. I do not want our
schools used to mask this. I do not want my
sumscruming off in a world where safety is defined by
surveillance and force. You've moved money before you can move
it again. I teach my since speak when something is wrong,
and that's why I'm here. Please listen, please act, thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh wait a minute, oh, she has supporters in the audience.
She's with some people. This will become important to confirm.
Speaker 4: This is the time to speak related to the Gun
Violence Awareness Month proclamation.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh, another speaker, all right, m.
Speaker 5: I was also a teacher, So thank you. Today this
county has recognized the national problem of gun violence. I
am proud of our commissioners for doing this. Too often,
young people are the main victims of guns. Sadly, the
generation graduating from college right now is often called the
school shooting generation. We have failed the youth by failing
to prevent gun violence from spreading. This county could take
their proclamation farther and do more to prevent gun violence
in its schools. Right now, our commissioners are actively funding
a project that would bring even more guns to a
community college right next to a CMS school. Our tax
dollars are oh no.
Speaker 4: No, because yeah, your your remarks are out of order.
This is not the time reform.
Speaker 5: For this is about gun violence. It's all right next
to you see him a school. Our talk sellers are
paying for more guns. We are told that safety measures
will prevent guns from leading.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to ask you.
Speaker 5: To magument that pro gun people say just lock up
the guns now.
Speaker 6: You're in violation of NCGS one four three Desk three
one eight zero point one seven by disrupting the meeting.
You're subject to being escorted out of the meeting chamber
charged with a misdemeanor if you don't cease talking.
Speaker 1: Cut off of mic nice Melma. Yeah so all right,
So as soon as he said you're you could be
charged with a misdemeanor if you don't stop talking. They
all shut up. There's a lesson here. There's a lesson.
That's the board chair, Mark Durell.
Speaker 2: You got your your you have to leave.
Speaker 7: Uh, mister officer, I'd like you to escort this young
lady out of the chamber.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 8: They did.
Speaker 1: Can you hear what they're saying. That's George Dunlap, a
couple other commissioners and they're like, she dropped something, yeah,
And George says, yeah, there were some other people they
were up there. They've they've been dropping stuff.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's some things being dropped.
Speaker 7: There was someone sitting up here on the on the
right hand side. What so I think if there are
items being passed around with bugs or whatever we got
going on.
Speaker 2: I like the officers to please.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute. Bugs. First thing I thought was like,
what are they wired tapping the place? Like, what's going on? Eavesdropping? No,
no actual bugs.
Speaker 7: Please check that out, please, if it's going up here
to my right, they're alive. I've got they put so
that was the box that was being passed around up top.
Speaker 2: Right where you are at the top of the stairs, officer.
Speaker 7: Those five people in that section right over here were
passing around some level of box exactly signs.
Speaker 1: It's a box of signs. They're just signs. Uh huh, yeah,
there's signs right, nice, Mark, Darrell Nice.
Speaker 8: They dropped something over here.
Speaker 2: Well, there are bugs up here. I think there's the box.
They've got it right there at least have them all right.
Speaker 7: We're just gonna we're gonna wait until we can get
get order, maintain order.
Speaker 2: It's a shame that we do this in front the
young lady like that.
Speaker 7: It's just shameful, shameful, shameful. You can leave, thank you
very much. We appreciate it. Anybody who's out of order.
If you speak out of order without being recognized, you
will be escorted out of this chamber.
Speaker 2: Period. There's a play time and place to be heard.
Speaker 7: Anyone can sign up to speak, and if you don't
sign up to speak from that where you're sitting is
not the place to address this body. We will have order,
we will not have disruption.
Speaker 1: Good for him. Here's the problem, though. The Mickelberg County
commissioners are one Democrat and the people that are dropping
all of the bugs up there in the boxes, they
are radical leftists, right. These are people that are sort
of your your street troops for the Democrats, and they
are man add the Democrats for building a law enforcement
training facility because we don't want trained law enforcement. Well,
in their mind, they don't want any law enforcement until
they take over, and then they would clamp down and
control people. That's the idea. That's why I call them
temporary anarchists. They're not actual anarchists. They don't want to
have a society of complete anarchy all the time. They
just need it temporarily so they can take over and
then they can impose their authoritarianism on others. That's all.
So they just want a different form of government that
they control, not you. They are impotent LARPers, but apparently
they know how to purchase a large quantity of crickets.
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so the Meckliberg County Commissioners holding their two point five
billion dollar budget adoption vote last night. Media was not
there at the beginning of the meeting, which, honestly, I mean,
I don't blame them, because it's just an hour of
Oh my gosh, we're doing such awesome things.
Speaker 2: Are you great?
Speaker 1: Oh you're great, I'm great. Oh I am too. Look
at that, We're all so great. Is all of that
kind of garbage that goes on at the beginning of
the meetings. The vote came like an hour and a
half into the meeting, but the beginning of the meeting
when they were doing the gun violence prevention or Gun
Violence Awareness Month proclamation. Yeah, these two one is claiming
to be and apparently somebody went and found her on
Facebook or LinkedIn or something, and she's still a teacher.
She's an art teacher confirmed. I think it's a read.
Is it regency something? Anyway, Then the second speaker gets
up and starts talking about cop City, what they call
cop City, what is referred to as the Central Piedmont
Community College Law Enforcement Training Center to train law enforcement
officers so they are better at their jobs. But to
the the LARPing ANTIFA folks, you can't have this, and
there's environmental also, there's an environmental component. Remember the one
down in Atlanta, the Copcity protests in Atlanta, they were
like so angry at the deforestation and all of that.
So in protests last night, they speak on a proclamation,
they get ruled out of order and then start screaming eh,
and then they get ejected escorted out. Now that's all
well and good. However, they dumped a bunch of crickets
in the chamber, which then had to be taken care.
Speaker 7: Of before we move on with the agenda, I understand
we should probably take a recess for cleanup, Okay, everybody. Unfortunately,
we're going to have to take a ten minute recess
to be able to clean up the bug situation that
we've got working apparently, So we.
Speaker 2: Will reconvene at seven five. Let's say, I.
Speaker 7: Want to thank Environmental Services for coming in. Thank you
so much for your help, ma'am. And now we're going
to move to the next portion of the agenda, which
is public appearance.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the Environmental Services folks came in and in
order to clean up, they vacuumed up the crickets. Good job,
eco warriors way to protect the environment, dumping a bunch
of live insects, which I thought you wanted us to eat.
But you dump a bunch of these insects all over
the chamber, and then workers had to come in and
suck them all up with a vacuum cleaner, murdering them.
Commissioners released a statement regarding the incident, quote, Mecklenberg County
condemns any inappropriate or out of order comments or other
disruptive tactics during Board of County Commissioners' meetings or any
other public meeting. Civil public participation is a bedrock of democracy.
The board has made it clear that the abuse of
public participation will not be tolerated. I think they handled
it well. I was happy to see the admonition from
the board chair, Mark Jurrell. I'm glad there was no
tolerance for it. I'm glad they got ejected. But that's
not enough. You will keep getting more of this crap
if you do not send a message to the people
that want to engage in it, slap them with the misdemeanors.
You don't get to release insects into public meeting chambers
while members of the public are there because last night
it was crickets, but in other venues they've dumped maggots. Right,
this is now, this is a I have seen multiple
occasions before last night here in Charlotte from around the country,
all various types of insects and creepy crawleyes and such.
And if you don't crack down on this, and you
don't do it immediately, you're going to get more of it.
What's ironic about this is that the two speakers who
prompted their removal because they were speaking about stuff that
wasn't on the item that they had signed up to
speak about. You just heard Jarell call the meeting back
into order and they're like, now we're moving to public comments,
and that's where you should have made your stupid statements.
You wouldn't have been ding ding ding off of the dais.
You would have been allowed to make your comments. But
you don't even know the basic rules of the people
that you're coming to talk in front of. That's how
little respect and knowledge they have of anything outside of
their particular field, you know. Oh yeah, there was also
a two and a half million dollar budget vote. All right,
if you're listening to this show, You know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
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Welcome to the show.
Speaker 9: Hello Tim, Hey, Hey Pete. How you doing I enjoy
your show, Thanks sir.
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 9: I just called a little bit at last segment. Did
you say they dropped crickets in the chambers?
Speaker 1: Yeah, boxes of live crickets.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And what did did environmental services come in and just
step on them?
Speaker 1: No, they came in with vacuum cleaners.
Speaker 9: Vacuum cleaners. H Well, they.
Speaker 1: Sucked them all up.
Speaker 9: They could have just stepped on them and that would
have really made them happy. But they had had to
use pointed cowboy boots as they got in the corner,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be a tough one.
Speaker 2: But no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they obviously are going to have to fire, or
not fire, but to bomb the place, you know, with
like obviously insect killer or something. But they went in
there in about ten minutes. They ran vacuums over the
areas and sucked all the as many of the crickets
up as possible. Some I'm sure did get away.
Speaker 9: And I heard I heard you say that in the
past they had dropped Trump supporters in places like that.
Oh no, you said maggots, not magots.
Speaker 1: Correct. Yes, was it really your bed? It was actually
your bed, so lamed him. I appreciate the commitment to
the bit in sounding like an idiot. No, that absolutely
he was all in on the bit. So I have
the Malik's audio because this is an unrelated matter to
the budget. Should I do this now two minutes? No,
I'm going to move on to the budget. So they
brought in budget director at a sorry Adrian Cox. He
made a brief presentation to the board about sort of
the highlights or low lights, if you will, of the budget.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 10: The county's current tax rate is the nineteenth lowest in
the state, and you can see the comparison to the
other ninety nine counties on this slide. It is also
lower than our neighboring counties and the three other largest
counties in the state.
Speaker 1: Oh see, so it's not that bad. We're better than
everybody else. We have much lower rates. By the way,
there is a reason for this because we have a
larger property tax base. We have a larger tax base,
we have more people, we have more expensive buildings, we
have more wealth, we are a larger area. So there
are all sorts of reasons for this. When you are
a poor, less populated county, you have to have a
higher rate in order to generate the revenue necessary to
run the government. So as a as Beckelberg County has
gotten bigger, our rate has gone down. So Arthur Griffin
actually addresses this later on. He then says state unfunded
mandates equate to sixteen cents on the tax rate. He
listed neighboring in peer counties once again in their plans
for tax increases for the coming year.
Speaker 10: Forsyth and Union County have just completed a revaluation and
both of their managers are recommending increases over their revenue
neutral rates, Forsyth a four point two cent increase and
Union a one point eight cent increase. Wake is also
proposing a rate increase for the fourth year in a
row this year for a quarter of a cent.
Speaker 1: Right, so the media what it's going to go to now?
The plan was for an increase of point ninety six cents,
basically ninety six cents per one per well, okay, say
this is WSOC TV. They they're breaking it down into
ten thousand dollars increment. So I don't know why, but
it's it's point nine to six cents per one hundred
dollars of valuation. That's always how it's been calculated. For
some reason, WSC and their story, they've got it as
ninety six cents for ten thousand dollars of home value.
Regardless when you do the math, it all comes out
the same way. Right now, Mecklenburg County has a forty
eight point thirty one per one hundred dollars of property
value cent forty eight point three one cents per one
hundred dollars of property value, And what that works out
to be is about eighteen hundred dollars a year for
the median priced homeowner. The median home price in Mecklimberg
County three hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars, right three
seventy seven, you're paying about eighteen twenty one a year
in Mecklenberg taxes. You will now be paying eighteen fifty
seven per year. That what is never mentioned in any
of these discussions when you talk about tax increases is
and it's not mentioned in this story. They don't tell
you what the current property tax bill is because a
rate is just a rate. What does the person pay,
Just like yesterday's discussion about teacher pay, and you know
five percent increases versus two percent increases, right, those percentage
increases or rate increases. They equate to different amounts of
actual cash. If you make more money, a five percent
pay raise nets you more money than somebody who makes
less money and gets the same five percent increase, they
actually don't enjoy as much money in their pocket. The
other thing that's never mentioned is that this is just
the county, the city of Charlotte. It takes up most
of Mecklenburg County, I think at this point, and so
you have to also add in the city's rate and
what people pay for that. The city property tax rate
is twenty seven for one, and that is another one
thousand and thirty three dollars on the median priced house.
So in other words, the median homeowner, median priced homeowner
is paying two thousand, eight hundred fifty four dollars a
year in taxes. And that's just property tax. And that's
just on the home. That works out to be two
hundred thirty eight dollars per month. Do you think you're
getting two hundred and thirty eight dollars worth of value
if you're a city resident, do you think you're getting
eighteen hundred and fifty seven dollars worth of value from
the county? But you'll be happy to know they have
cut to the bone here people. There's nothing else that
they can cut, not a single thing. They had to
make cuts. They had to not fill positions, they had
to not give some nonprofits some grant money. There's just
nowhere left to cut. They have to raise your taxes.
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Going over the Mecklenburg County budget that was approved last night,
it's two point five billion dollars. Two point five billion dollars.
I go away for like eight years, not to prison,
but to Ashville, which is kind of the same thing,
but not really. But I come back and the budget
went from a billion to two and a half. What
have you guys been doing down here? Everything apparently and
nothing all at the same time. So commissioners noted that
the manager's budget recommended a one cent increase on the
rate last year, but the county commissioners were like, oh,
we can't possibly raise taxes one cent. It's an election year.
I mean, sorry, the conditions don't warranted. People are hurting.
We can't do this, inflation whatever, COVID and everything. Okay,
so they didn't want to raise it one cent last year,
so they only raised it by like half a cent
last year. But now it's not an election year, so
now they got to pay the price, and by day
they mean you and me, we have to pay because
we didn't pay last year. So now they're going to
have to raise it a penny because otherwise, like they
would have raised it a penny last year and then
only half a cent this year, I guess. Anyway, here's
Susan Rodriguez McDowell.
Speaker 8: No one relishes raising property taxes, especially when doing so
will always impact lower income folks the most as a
proportion of their income.
Speaker 1: But we'll do it.
Speaker 8: That is why we provide relief as the best we can.
But it is the folks above the lowest threshold that
get squeezed with no recourse, and I'm truly mindful of them.
But that is why I've advocated last year to push
a half a cent increase to this year, so the
increase last year would be more gradual over time.
Speaker 1: It's not so now. But it's not more gradual. It's
the same. It's a half cent last year, a full
cent this year. If you had done the full cent
last year, you'd have done a half cent this year.
It's not gradual. It's the same amount of money after
two years.
Speaker 8: We are adding that halfpenny plus another half. Yes, and
we have to also be upfront and honest about the
fact that there will be more in the near future
with a school bond, with the school bond increase that's
coming up.
Speaker 1: Whoa, whoah, whah, Wait a minute, are you telling me
that bonds raise property taxes?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: No, really, of course they do. I've been saying that
for twenty years. They've been pitching school bonds every other year,
every third year, and it's like, this is raising property taxes. Well,
but the interest rates are so lowly we'd be fools
not to borrow a billion dollars here and a billionaire
or whatever.
Speaker 8: And the possibility of a transportation sales.
Speaker 1: Tax increase a double lammy company.
Speaker 8: Huge problem for US is our state and federal governments.
They are both failing us. They are both conspiring to
privatize to the point of crippling taxpayers. The County is
the bottom of this hierarchy, and your higher property taxes
and sales taxes will be the result. Money flows to
the most powerful, and that is how it is all
being set up to stay.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, I love me a good conspiracy theory. No, I don't,
and that's not even a good one. They're conspiring to privatize.
What are you talking about. You have many tens of millions.
Actually it's probably more than that. At this point, one
hundred million plus of the Mecklenburg County budget goes to nonprofits.
It's the same concept. You guys, you're doing it yourselves.
You voted for it yourselves last night. You're like, oh,
we do health and human services, but there are all
these other nonprofits and we'll just give them grants so
they can do it. Well, that's how is that any different?
Laura Meyer, she was the one who said that they're
cutting it. They've cut all they can. This is these
are deep cuts. They've cut all they can. There's nothing
else to cut, not a single thing. They did approve
one hundred twenty five thousand dollars for the Charlotte Pride
Parade next year. That's in the budget. But they've cut
all they can cut people. Also, they spend two hundred
thousand dollars for sponsorship of the NAAP conference for ten tickets,
ten whole tickets that they get to they get to
give to county staff and Elaine Powell thought that everybody
from the county got to go, and Dana Gioria was like,
uh no, it gets us ten tickets for two hundred grand.
But that's out of this year's budget people, this year's budget,
so it's not part of the next year tax increase.
It was part of this year's tax increase. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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