Letter: Delete the pork before the vote

As I was sipping my breakfast coffee, I was struck by your headline, “Officials lean toward letting voters decide.” How nice of them. My first thought was, “What a concept.”

Then I read further. I was astounded by the statement by Beaufort County Council member Jerry Stewart who — after Councilwoman Cynthia Bensch was quoted as saying that some of the projects to be financed by taxpayers were “... pure pork …” — said that he “... thinks it’s a good list, and I think it’s important to get it out to the citizens.”

Then he says his “… rule of thumb is if you can agree to 70 percent of what’s on the projects list, it’s probably a good deal for the county.” Excuse me? We are to vote on a $120 million sales tax under the premise that maybe $84 million is worthwhile? Where does the remaining $36 million go? A manager in the private sector would have lost his job after such a statement.

So the voter — the taxpayer — is not to worry. He is to be asked to approve sales tax increases amounting to a cool $402 million ($120 million for county and $282 million for schools and “other capital projects”) and maybe, just maybe, 70 percent of those expenditures will be legitimate.

How about this? Let’s get the actual projects and true numbers in front of the public before we ask them to spend their hard-earned dollars on some level of pork.

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Letter: Delete the pork before the vote."