Porking around with your county commissioners
Guilford County commissioners designated $150,000 Thursday to the Pleasant Garden Community Center so the organization could install new ballfield lights.
Some might call that pork. The proposal came from an unexpected source: Republican Billy Yow.
Here's where commissioners got the money: $90,000 came from funds previously slated for the planned Pleasant Garden YMCA (that project is on hold), and $60,000 came from Manager David McNeill's contingency fund. To get the money, the community center must raise $75,000 in matching funds.
But some commissioners balked at Yow's request. Among them was Carolyn Coleman, who said Yow was overstepping boundaries because the project was in her district. Yow said Coleman had ignored pleas for the lights from area residents, and added that some of the folks who supported the project live in his district.
Coleman offered another way to pay for the lights, but that proposal was voted down.
Yow is often critical of pork-barrel spending that majority Democrats put in their annual budgets. But he said money for the lights was already in the budget, so he was just rearranging the pork.
"This is excess pork that they put in the budget that’s just lying there that could’ve been used to reduce capital projects or reduce taxes," Yow said Friday.
The other thing in play here is the question of how groups like the community center should receive county money. Earlier this year the county established a new process for doling out money for these non-profits, with a committee of commissioners reviewing requests before making a recommendation to the county commissioners.
Davis, who often pushes for funding for youth sports programs in his district, leads that committee. He said Yow's efforts "shot a big hole in that process."
"All the work that we’ve done, I think, has been thrown out the door," Davis said today.
Yow's proposal passed 7-4, with Democrats Coleman, Davis, Melvin "Skip" Alston and Kirk Perkins voting no.
I'll be interested to see how this precedent shakes up the annual budget process. Keep reading for more stories on the budget in the coming weeks.
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