Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / Jan. 6, 1994, edition 1 / Page 4
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Opinion Page THE BRUNSWICK&BEACON Edward M Sweatt and Carolyn H. Sweatt Publishers Edward M. Sweatt Editor Lynn S. Carlson Managing Editor Susan Usher Neivs Editor Doug Rut ter Sports Editor Eii?. Caih?un StaJJ Writer Mary Potts & Peggy Earwood Office Managers Carolyn H. Sweatt Advertising Director Tlmberlev Adams, Cecelia Gore and Linda Cheers Advertising Representatives Dorothy Brcnnan and Brenda Clcmmons Moore ..Graphic Artists William Manning Pressman Lonnle Sprinkle ?Assistant Pressman David White Photo Technician PAGE 4-A, THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 1994 School Board Learns The Hard Way To Listen To Good Advice The Brunswick County Board of Education is learning the hard, embarrassing way that it pays to follow through, quickly and thoroughly, when vour accountants sav you should tiuhten controls. This past November wasn't the first time auditors have sug gested the school system get a better grip on its more than $70 million worth ol fixed assets. That's $70 million worth of taxpay er-owned property, it's important to remember. What il took to force the issue was the apparently unautho rized disposal of some 46 pieces of cafeteria equipment, sold back iu July w ithout having been declared surplus, for a total of $350. Police say the restaurateur who bought the equipment in turn sold !2 pieces of it for $7,800 to a restaurant equipment firm mi the same day it was delivered to him by school personnel in school-ow ned vehicles. That's an average return of $650 per piece in the private sec tor on equipment acquired at an average of $7.61 per piece from a public source. Twenty pieces are still unaccounted for. Depending on how you do the math, they may be worth $152.20 or $13,000, or somewhere in between. The whole mess has cost maintenance supervisor Odell Benton his job, though Benton denies strenuously that he had anything to do with the sale, but simply delivered the equipment in the same procedure used throughout his 15 years with the sys tem. Meanwhile, child nutrition supervisor Rebecca Brandon, who authorized the sale, claimed not to know she had no authority to do so. She, or someone else, apparently also lacked any knowl edge ol the value w! the equipment. She remains in nv_i |M>iiuin. The school board is having to sue the restaurateur in an at tempt to recover the rest of the goods, a good indication to expect there will be a lot more time, lawyeis and money between the blunder and some answers. That is making the leap of faith that a blunder is all it is... In the meantime, the school board has hired a fixed assets co ordinator who has proved she's pretty competent at finding things and has a low tolerance for slipshod procedure. That's good news. "If it happened this time, how many times has it happened before?" the school board chairman said last week. Don't hold your breath waiting for an answer. At any rate, it's time to put a good chain on the barn door be fore am more (if the horses wander off. Worth Repeating... ? If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be dosed for any oilier business. I do the very best 1 know how?the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won V amount to anything. If the end brings out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. ?Abraham Lincoln ? The sole substitute for an experience which we have not our selves lived through is art and literature. ?Alexander Solzhenitsyn " The idea that men tire created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other ?David Riesman ? Inspiration descends only in flashes, to clothe circumstances; it is not stored up in a barrel, like salt herrings, to he doled out. ?Patrick White ?A smile /.> the chosen vehicle for most uinbiguiiies. ?Herman Melville It's Open Season On Political Candidates Filing season opened Monday, in all likelihood pushing some unlikely people into the glaring liphts of the public arena. Unlike the first day of deer hunt ing or fishing season, on filing day there's no rash of employees calling in "sick" ht*cause they have some thing better to do than work. Instead, would-be public office holders begin flocking outside the Brunswick County Board of Elections office at Bolivia shortly before noon, followed closely by a similarly-sized flock of watch hounds or vultures, depending on your view of the press anil media. These early bird candidates are vying for honors as the first to file - and maybe get their picture taken by a news photographer. They're like greyhounds at a Florida racetrack, eyeing the "rabbit" and chafing at the gate for the race to begin. The less eager or more wary will take Susan Usher v y. their lime, filing sometime before noon Feb. 7?after checking out the competition. This year, a few may he confused momentarily on arriving at Ihe com plex. The elections office has moved around Ihe corner from the tax building to the agriculture building. Not all of Ihe first-day polilicos may gel their photographs taken or campaign vows quoted, bul all will leave Ihe elections office with some thing new to do: As one more conse quence uf the county's continuing yrowih, candidates for all local of fices must report campaign finances starting this year. Voters will find out. to some de gree, who is financially supporting each candidate's hid for office. I say hurray, the more accountability to voters the better. Previously this information has only been available for area district offices when the district, like the 14th House, had a population of more than 50.0(H). Now Brunswick County's population has passed that benchmark. I can get enthusiastic over the new reporting requirements for rea sons other than accountability to voters. After you've covered local elections in one community or an other for 20 years, each race starts looking and sounding like the rest. The issues remain much the same, only the names of the candidates sometimes change. I think this must he why journal ists covering hopefuls for national office start prying into candidates private lives?just tor something fresh to report, hang the conse quences. However, the new campaign fi nance reports will provide legitimate fresh fodder for jaded reporters and their equally jaded readers. Even in Brunswick County, where a high percentage of residents relish the sound and fury of local politics ami follow every move, it's nice to have something new to say about the can didates. You can het there will he re porters jumping on each report the day s! is filed. By the end of the vear. we'll all probably be sick ol reading who wrote who a check That's the American way. though, and I wouldn't exchange for any other. Ken ember oil fhe+hims ue bought iasrueqn lOhen -fbey said *No Thymerrf (Jni'l 1HHA1 f ^ U mm "SA<30l/F& mj CAROLINA CflKT0D?J Bubbie, bubbie, On The Double: Happy New Year Fortified by a home-cooked New Year's Day feast of collard greens, hoppin' john and jalapcno cornbread (I don't need luck, money or tradi tion badly enough to eat hog jowl) I guess I'm ready to face the chal lenge of another year on the planet. It' you're like me. you probably don't really believe that col lards will bring you greenbacks or that black eved peas are lucky. I have a pretty good idea that this particular (peculiar?) Southern cus tom is linked to the fact that a meal of legumes, rice and cruciferous vegetables seasoned with peppered sidemeat?Tabasco liberally applied to everything on the plate?is useful in neutralizing the after-effects of the liquid toxins associated with New Year's Eve. Eric and I used to sell those toxins for a living. New Year's Eve was the busiest day of the ye;tr at our Good Spirits Shop, where people un schooled in the ways of the grape came for help choosing the right bottles of celebratory bubbly. (On all the other days of the year they bought their Budweiser and Manischewitz at the Winn-Dixie next door, which explains why our foray into retailing was short-lived.) We know from experience that you can. on New Year's Eve. with nut hr#?:ikin?* ?? S\VC2!, !u!k U Lynn Carlson who normally drinks his Crown Royal mixed with Mountain Dew into buying a bottle of Dom Perig non to impress a dale. After all. what's eighty bucks when it earns you a reputation as a sugar daddy'.' We learned that you cannot, no matter how persuasive or persistent you are. change the mind of some one who likes cold duck. And strangest of all w.ts the reve lation that there are nomad Yankees who wander the rural South in a quest lor sparkling burgundy. You could count on a handful of them every holiday. Yankee to me: "Where's ya spauklin' boigundy?" Me to Yankee: "We ain't got none, good buddy. Ain't a jobber in this market carries it no more. Kin I interest you in a nice Chateauneuf du Pape? Yankee to me (very loudly as mw,.>uv nUlK.> out till. VJtHH). "Sheesh!" All day long on New Year's Eve. people would tentatively ask for help picking out a bottle of cham pagne. as il ashamed they didn't au tomatically know what they wanted. How could they? It's confusing! For instance, it is not commonly known that a sparkling wine labeled "extra dry" is not dry at all. hut much sweeter than its drier cousin "brut." However, there is one American sparkling wine labeled "extremely dry" which is more tart than the brut style of the same brand. Spumantc is the same iliiug as champagne, except that it is usually sickly sweet, overpriced and made in Italy. In Europe, you can't call it champagne unless the grapes are grown in the Champagne region of France. Amciicau sparkling wines are the same thing, too. basically. Some de fiantly call themselves champagne, while others respect the French rules Any wine made by the same method as real French champagne is labeled "method champenoise" and will always be much tastier than any brand labeled "charmat hulk process." Yoii could pretty much count on .1 customer who asked for help to he a nice, honest person. You could count on those who should have asked, but didn't, to buy the most expensive thing on the snelt. assuming it would be the best. They were wrong, but you never heard us com plain about it. Having been wine merchants, we've had every kind of champagne trom the supermarket's rot-gut plastic-cork kind to the vintage French varieties at the top of the line. It doesn't pay to be snobby. There's one brand available at S3.W (as low as $3.4l) on sale) from both supermarkets in Shallotte which I would have pegged blind folded at SI0. There is another brand (I wont name it. but it comes in a black bot tle) which is wildly popular, al though I think it has a nasty after taste. I he best value in the supermarket is a brand've seen on sale through out the holidays for around $7; to taste it without seeing the bottle, you d swear it was French and in the $25 range. In our experience the $25 and $35 and $65 French kinds are consistent ly exquisite, but we gave them up when salesmen stopped giving them to us as holiday gilts After all. folks who eat collard green:, m.union i get too big lor their britches. Keep Your Eyes On The Rood, Hands Upon The Wheel I wav watching an old VV.C. Fields movie the other da\ The climnx was a wild, runaway car scene- where (ieids and anoth er guy were ca reening town .i twisty canyon road and fighting ;ner the steering wheel ut .in open tupped Model-A !? vers time fields wrestled the wheel !<? tin left, the car slid halfway off the edge and narrowly missed falling into the chasm. In the nick of time, the other guy would pull to the right and send them smashing into the jagged rock wall. Just as the car was ahout to crash into a giant houlder. Fields would yank it hack in the nick of time?to ward the clitl again I lie old Ford went on like this forever, crashing and scraping and dropping pieces of its bodywork until you could scan ely recognise it as a car. In his typical style. Fields seemed blissfully Unruffled by all the danger anil destruction as he calmly remarked: "By the lime this journey is over, the re-sale value ol this vehicle will In; nil!" Eventually, the car flew into a grove of trees, smashed into a giant oak and catapulted the two occu pants into a field. What remained of the Ford gasped one final sigh and settled to the ground in a heap of MriokiOg i Uimmc. As we embark on another election year, with candi dates beginning to file for the May 3 primary, that scune reminded me .1 lot ol |X>litics 111 Biunswick County. When I moved here nearly two years ago, we had an all-Rcpuhlican board of commissioners. Iking a life long Democrat, I approached the joh of covering coun ty government with a healthy dose of cautious skepti cism. Though I occasionally disagreed with their com ments and actions. I found the board members to be conscientious and well-meaning and willing to take a stand lor what they fell government should ,ind shouldn't do w ith our lax money. I was also intrigued that they had chosen an active Democrat to serve as county manager and attorney. Considering how often he politely gave the commis sioners advice they didn't want to hear, it was obvious that David Clegg had been selected tor his management skills, not his willingness to agree. There are a lot of boards where that is not the case. So I was pretty impressed with Brunswick County. When the nexi election brought a new majority of Democrats to the hoard, I expected things to roll along in pretty much the same way, with some minor philo sophical differences. Silly me. One week aflei the election, I sal down with Clegg for our usual chat before the commission ers' meeting. I was puzzled to lind him not a hit en couraged about the prospect of serving a hoard domi nated hy his own political parly. He said he expected to he fired. He told me to watch oui for pressure on other county department heads like Engineer Robert Tucker, Emergency Management Coordinator Cecil Logan. Parks and Recreation Director H.J. Jones and Clerk to the Hoard Kelly Barefoot. Hut you're a Democrat. And so is Kelly," I said naively. Just watch," he said. Sure enough, each person on the list came under fire within the first year. Clegg and Harcfoot resigned. Jones wa% written out of the lirst budget proposal (but eventually survived). Ixtgan was demoted. Tucker was stripped of some responsibilities and became the target of frequent snipes by hoard members. When these events were reported or commented on in the newspaper, Democrats complained loudly that this sort of thing has always gone on in Brunswick County. Politics as usual Previous boards did the same thing. I was |usi new to all this, they said. All r.f which may be true. But it doesn't make it right. During the last election. 1 don't recall any great out cry trom the pubiic demanding retribution against county employees hired by previous boards. But I do remember the Democratic I \ecutive Committee giving their new commissioners marching orders to that effect. Which suggests to me that voters in this county ought to pay a little more attention to the election process this year I hey need to gel involved in party politics and to make sure that their candidates share the same concerns they have tor the county's future. 1 hey shouldn I leave the selection of candidates to small cliques ol party activists whose primary concern is to settle old grudges against previous administra tions. I hey should encourage new candidates to stop all this lighting over the steering wheel, to keep their eyes on the road and to torget about the rear-view mirror. As the I'renchman Joseph dc Maistrc said in 1X11. "livery nation has the government it deserves ' It you observe government, you get observant gov ernment. II you ignore government, you gel what you de serve
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Jan. 6, 1994, edition 1
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