The Duplin County Board of Commissioners meeting this evening was a full house after the board faced some scrutiny recently. This comes after the county purchased a corporate golf membership which they say was an effort to expand tourism, but community members are not so convinced. <\/p>\n
We are not going away, we are not backing down, and the more you ignore us the louder we will get.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s Duplin County Board of Commissioners meeting brought a full house. Not only in the boardroom, but in the hallway, and the front room.<\/p>\n
The board did not address the topic during the meeting, and neither did the County manager Bryan Miller.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never seen our community so united.<\/p>\n
Community advocate Jessica Thomas says they will get answers.<\/p>\n
Taxpayers have every right to ask for this information and receive this information about where our tax money is going.<\/p>\n
She says that when she first inquired about the numbers, she was met with resistance getting answers.<\/p>\n
And that the 5400 dollars for golf membership was the final nail in the coffin.<\/p>\n
Transparency\u2019s the law in North Carolina, it shouldn\u2019t be an option, especially in our government.The reality is, if we all paying better attention, it would not take a Facebook hissy fit to implore people to participate.<\/p>\n
The social media reaction following the post on Duplin County\u2019s Facebook page pushed the county to react.<\/p>\n
Uploading another post that the purchase was part of a broader program, but Thomas is not so convinced.<\/p>\n
So when I started investigating and um\u2014I was met with resistance. It\u2019s a lack of accountability, a lack of transparency, that sent up every red flag for me.<\/p>\n
She encourages the community to remain diligent.<\/p>\n
We have rights as taxpayers, and we should know about those rights and use those rights to benefit our community.<\/p>\n
Following the meeting, the board went into closed session, and I was unable to ask the Commissioners or county manager any follow up questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Duplin County Board of Commissioners meeting this evening was a full house after the board faced some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[7045,39180,1075,46150,427,46151,99,18630,6808,19564],"class_list":["post-62338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-accountability","tag-backlash","tag-community","tag-duplin-county","tag-golf","tag-golf-membership","tag-sports","tag-taxpayers","tag-tourism","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}