DANBURY
The Stokes County budget has been approved and the commissioners are moving on to the task of filling empty positions. But the tension created during budget talks between some county residents and the commissioners is far from dissipated, and the battle, it seems, may be just beginning.
'We, and by we I mean I, think that we have the right to recall an elected official who is endangering the area they serve,' said Ed Gambill of King at a meeting of the Stokes Citizens for Responsible Government.
The organization is a fledgling group of Stokes residents who want to serve as a watchdog group and look for a way to remove Sandy McHugh, the chairman of the Board of Commissioners and acting interim county manager, from office. The small group is recruiting members by distributing voter-registration forms around neighborhoods and in store parking lots.
Throughout the budget process, some who attended commissioners' meetings expressed concerns over McHugh's budget proposal, which made cuts to the departments of education, health, mental health, social services and Medicaid. People from all walks of life and political affiliations spoke to the commissioners during public-comment sessions.
'Services make our lives better, richer and add to our quality of life,' said Ellen Peric, a county resident, during one such session Monday. 'I'm concerned by the actions of the budget cuts that we will set our county back into the previous century rather than moving forward into the (21st).'
Peric's concerns echoed those of about 100 Stokes teachers, health-care workers, social workers and residents who regularly attended public meetings, often filling the second-floor meeting room, lining the halls and spilling out into the parking lot of the government center.
The size of the turnout indicated the depth of concern -- some residents and commissioners even disagreed on when the public should be invited into the process.
Commissioner Joe Turpin said that budget work sessions were not intended to be public hearings. Rather, the sessions were for commissioners to work on the budget and discuss their feelings candidly.
'We've allowed people to jeer, lie on the floor, fuss and disrupt,' he said Wednesday after the budget was approved. 'And these are the same people that are going to educate our children.'
At the first meeting of Stokes Citizens, more than 100 people showed up. After the budget was approved, though, interest waned as the school system got the $7.7 million it requested plus an additional nearly $200,000 for instructional supplies and textbooks.
At a meeting Thursday, committee Chairman Linda Hicks said she was disappointed in the turnout, but that 'the war continues.' The grounds for war, according to those who attended, are the 'irresponsible' actions of 'a few' commissioners - McHugh, John Turpin and Joe Turpin.
Though educators are content with the money allotted to them, the departments of health, mental health and social services are enduring severe budget cuts that have given the Stokes Citizens a platform for protest. The budgets of the three departments were cut by about $900,000.
McHugh said that the county could receive more money from the state later but it didn't want to count on that for budget purposes.
The three commissioners most often criticized by Stokes Citizens deny that they deliberately vote together to form a majority on the five-member board.
'People are biting the hand that feeds them,' said Joe Turpin. 'It's amazing because the worst thing that we have in our society is people who assume stuff. When you start assuming things or have a prejudice against something, you're not thinking clearly. And we were definitely open-minded on this budget.'
Some issues, he said, are clear. 'We all agreed that we wouldn't raise taxes and I think that a lot of times we've had to work toward that goal in other ways. So that's where people want to group us together. But I'll be the first to say there's several things that I disagree with Sandy on.'
One of them, he said, was money for the arts council.
'She (Sandy) was all for funding and we said cut them out. We had been told by some people in the arts council to cut them out because they said that if we cut their money off, that would get them going.'
Despite their reasoning, the trio has been labeled the 'three devils' by some of the more outspoken meeting attendees.
McHugh's qualifications to serve as a commissioner and county manager were also questioned during the budget battle. She said that sometimes 'common sense' can be the best qualification for a public official. 'What people need to understand is that what the county manager produces is a recommended budget,' she said. 'That's all it is. It's not the final budget. The county commissioners make the decisions on what that final budget will look like.'
McHugh also had to deal with the perception that she dislikes public schools because she home-schools her daughter and initially recommended cuts to the school budget.
She said she never had any intention of cutting money for schools, but rather wanted the accountability that comes with an itemized budget.
'I tried to tell all these people who were being told they were going to lose their jobs that they weren't,' McHugh said. 'The whole purpose of the school budget was to, for the first time in memorable history, get them to submit a legal budget and to include all the revenues and all the expenditures and to explain what are you funding with federal money, what are you funding with state money. And what are you funding with county money. Let us know. The citizens deserve to know how their tax money is being spent. I don't think expecting accountability ... is asking too much.'
As for home-schooling, she said, 'As though if I don't have a child in Stokes County Public Schools, that means I don't care about the 7,500 children that are in Stokes County,' she said. 'I mean, I care. I care about their education. I have a lot of friends who have children in public schools. And to insinuate that I don't care about them because my child is not in those schools is ridiculous, beyond reason ridiculous. There are members of the school board who don't have children in Stokes County Public Schools.'
But McHugh and the commissioners remain unfazed by the criticism. 'I'm getting a lot of calls and a lot of e-mails,' McHugh said. 'I'm getting a lot of people who just walk up to me wherever I go and say, 'don't give in. We support you. We understand what you're doing, we like what you're doing. Don't quit.' They are the people of Stokes County.'
? Jessica Guenzel can be reached at 727-7338 or atjguenzel@wsjournal.com
