Many people have responded in support to my blog concerning the School Board wanting the County Commissioners to borrow 53 million dollars ro rebuild Eastern High School without the voters approval.  I appreciate all of the comments, which are totally in line with my thinking on the subject.

However, let me push the level a little bit further.  If you are not in favor of allowing the County Commissioners to borrow funds without your permission to build a new school, I am sure you will be outraged if the County Commissioners would consider borrowing money to build a new jail without the taxpayers permission.

I am sure by now that the general public is aware of the fact that the County Commssioners, led by our Chairman Paul Gibson, our Sheriff B. J. Barnes and County Commissioner Billy Yow, are considering borrowing 104 million dollars to build a new County Jail here in Greensboro.  If the jail is built, the annual operating cost of the jail will be an additional 18-23 million dollars.

To pay for the new jail, the County Commissioners will have to increase your taxes by 4 addtional cents,  To pay for the operation of the new jail, your taxes will increase an additional 5-6 cents.  These increases in your tax bill is in addtion to the already estimated tax increase for this coming budget year of 9 additional cents.

So I ask you the tax payers of Guilford County, why aren't you getting mad as hell, about the possibility of this happening.  Mr. Gibson is trying to cut every deal he can with the commissioners to get the six votes he needs to carry out this plan.  He currently has the support of five of the commissioners including himself, to vote for Certificates of Participation (COP) to pay for the new jail.  As you know, Certificates of Participation is a legal way that the County Commissioners can borrow money without asking for the voters approval, unlike Bonds, then the Commissioners will have to raise your taxes to pay for the increased debt.

The following Commissioners at this moment are planning to vote for the "COP" plan for financing of the new jail. They are Paul Gibson, Kay Cashion, John Parks, Mike Winstead and Billy Yow.  Paul only needs one more vote to make this happen.  The weak links are Linda Shaw and Kirk Perkins.  These two Commissioners along with the above five commissioners voted to approve 3.8 million dollars to hire an architect to design the new jail, even though we have not appoved the method of financing.  So if the new jail is not built, we would have wasted 3.8 million dollars of tax payers money.

I am asking you the tax payers of this county, if you think that you should have a say so about the Commissioners creating an additional 104 million dollar debt to build the new jail and an addtional 18-23 million dollars of annual operating cost to operate the new jail, then you need to contact the five Commissioners listed above and let them know that you don't want them to vote for the COP plan.

If they are convinced that we need a new jail,  then they should be able to make a strong case to the general public and allow the public to vote on this issue by putting forth a bond referrendum.

In the coming days, I will share with you various ways to decrease the over crowding in the current jail by over 25 - 30 percent by using alternative ways of incarceration.  By using alternative ways of incarceration we will still have room for the real criminals.

What are your thoughts on this subject?