Inside Cumberland County: Schools, Infrastructure, and Nonprofit Oversight

Peter Pappas: Well, everybody, good afternoon and welcome to the Carolina Cabinet. I'm your host, Peter Pappas, in studio with the lovely Laura Mussler Hello, hello. And we here at the cabinet know this is the smartest hour of radio. Our job is to give a voice to the conservatives of Fayetteville, Carmelin County and beyond. And today you're stuck with just me and Laura today. I think that's a pretty good deal. I think so. For some. Sometimes. You know, you look very nice today. Thank I mentioned, know, and you said well I am. You always do. Well, the other day I in, I didn't even realize I never put on makeup. Yeah. I was so sick, and I just was unimposing. You were still accepting believing in like no makeup and jogging pants, but we wouldn't really take you many places. Thank you. I appreciate that. So what kind of trouble since the last couple of days have you managed to find? Not been in trouble? I've not gotten in trouble, but I heard somebody else did. Well, I just like to interact with our state senator. ⁓ You know, and again, it's that online persona you deal with versus the in-person shaking hands, looking in the eye. Big difference. There is a big difference. And I will be inviting her because she does have an election this year. She is up for election, ⁓ Senator Applewhite. ⁓ Of course, a lot of Democrats and a lot of people in her caucus, they are anti-ICE. ⁓ So they play the narrative of, they're getting Veterans they're arresting citizens and the first post she put within 24 hours was she says, know, Latinos can be citizens I Think so. I wasn't I was shocked or not shocked at that. I'm not sure I wish I knew a family like around me that was a family of immigrants I Don't know like do I know any immigrants in my family? mean I'm not sure what immigration Yeah, pretty much our story starts in 68. That's it. ⁓ but you know, of course we're on stolen lands Whatever conquered land conquered land every piece of land in the entire world Is stolen land was from somebody else. Well, it's kind of like ⁓ is that blood money? Yeah, you know any money that doesn't You know, the united states currency. There's a high statistic that how much percentage of it has cocaine So anyway, so it's all over Yeah, it's all over. But anyway, so the narrative is, you know, first of all, that we're anti-ice because we are, and to me, it's like accidentally sweeping up veterans and citizens. Okay. I don't believe that. I'd like to know who that is. If somebody's ever been swept up and not released like right away, I'd like to hear their story. Right. Well, and I contend as well that, you know, if we're violating, if the federal government is violating people's civil rights, where are the lawsuits? Where are the where is the actual legal outrage? Where are the you know, excessive force? Complaints and things because you can sue for those things. I mean that they are not immune Did you see the latest video that came out like yesterday the day before? Where the people surrounded the ice video or the ice truck because they were scoping out a guy that was grabbing women by ⁓ Literally by the keys. Yes. Okay, and ⁓ Ice was there to arrest him he child. yeah. He was 19 years old and grabbing young teenage girls and they were blowing whistles and screaming at him so that he got away. Look, the narrative of, ⁓ these people are just poor farmers and, and that was the other post that the senator made again, in line with her caucus. So it's not, I don't feel like it's her, but, ⁓ no, no, no, no. There are things that my caucus does that I don't hope because I don't agree with them. Well, to me, it was a portrayal of, well, enjoy your, if you like ice, then enjoy your expensive ⁓ strawberries in the spring summer. So basically it's okay to let illegals in the country to be your slaves and clean your toilets. But that's what they say. You know, so what do we, what do we, where's the moral high ground? There. The Democrats possessed something I didn't know about. ⁓ All right. Well, uh, let's see. What else did I do? I like strawberries. You know, the thing about the produce being more expensive at all. We are going to see expensive produce in the next few months because every year we see the seasonality. Uh, when we get to the grocery store, that's what you see. They can't grow lettuce in a certain region of the United States. They move it to the Midwest or Arizona or then back to Florida. it's. But I will say there is such thing as called a work pizza. Yeah, and many agricultural firms use them. That's exactly right. So it's not like we're not, ⁓ if we can't have illegals here, then we're not going to have work farming people. That's not true. Yeah, no, it doesn't mean automatically we're going to lose all the people picking our farm, our crops, I guess. Or cleaning our toilets. Or cleaning our toilets, yeah. I know how to do my own, so I just choose not to. I got a guy. I was going say you clean your own toilet really? I have been known to clean my own toilet, yes ma'am. I do know how to do these things. It's kind of like, don't know how to change the oil and change the brakes on my car. just don't to. Right. Because, you know, I can do other things instead. So last night, I was cooking dinner and I, so I basically logged into YouTube for the Cumberland County and ⁓ Well, it was a regular meeting for the guys last night and then ⁓ for the guys and ladies I say ⁓ So I need So you're talking about County Commissioners So Chairman Debbie or yes, I'm doing that now ma'am, okay. I see how I get ordered around ⁓ I gotta make it look like that. You know, you're in charge. Hey Royal. So, ⁓ OK, so state of the county chairman Debbie or gave that address yesterday ⁓ or last night. The rest of the Commission was silent. May just let him as chairman give this thing. ⁓ It was a lot. It sounded very expensive now. There was clean water and infrastructure discussed concerning filtration systems for Grace Creek Elementary. What's that? Okay, so they talk about for the Grace Creek Elementary schools that they're talking about lot of filtration systems. But I actually own a home. And it's very, very expensive to put a water filtration system. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't put PFAS in the water. I'm using well water because that's where we live. Right. Why do I have to come up with tens? thousands of dollars to fix something that somebody did do us. Why shouldn't ⁓ Kimmours, DuPont, whatever they want to call themselves today, be paying for us individuals to put this on our own homes? agree. ⁓ So from what I understand, there's lawsuits for Kimmours and DuPont right now, but that can take years. So the county in the last several years has tried to be proactive and say, look, no matter what the lawsuit does, we need to work on getting the infrastructure of. Right. What do they call it? Filtered or safe drinking water? Well, want regulated clean drinking water is what the county wants, but they have to lay in the infrastructure. what we were discussing or what was discussed last night, there's been over $260 million committed to bringing the water lines, but that won't mean they're going to hook up to your home. absolutely. But that's just like any place else. They'll make the water available. You don't have to. You can drink PFAS. But I didn't put the PFAS in the water. Didn't the company pay for it? I agree they should, but the county's not. See, that's the disparity between the lawsuit and how it's going to shake out. I agree. Hey, I'm not arguing that at all. But the way utilities work is they bring it to your street. It's up to you to go get it from the street. the other topic was education and workforce. over 15 years. So Chairman DeVere, he made the claim that the first board in 15 years to be full to fully fund the school system. Okay. So ⁓ now we're going to be bringing Chairman DeVere on next Wednesday, same time 2pm. ⁓ And I'm going to be we want to find out details of this because to me, last night sounded expensive. ⁓ Based on what I saw and based on what little bit of knowledge I may or may not have about the county. ⁓ I would hope so. So caring for the unhoused community, which is homeless folks. ⁓ They're talking about expanding emergency shelter. They've invested millions in nonprofit partners, which I seriously disagree with. ⁓ I think that we need to be investing in auditing these nonprofits. Agreed. I think we need to be auditing these co-ops. We need to be auditing the ⁓ nonprofit organizations, all of it, because everywhere else in the country, they're having fraud. And so maybe we can fund an aquatic center with the money that they're defrauding from the, or give it to people who actually do Like that little Terry girl who does with the Yeah, we need to have Ms. Thomas back on here. I think actually I ran into some grift. got to dig into it a little bit, but I put an offer on a property for a client last weekend. And I said, well, let me figure out what the neighbor, who the neighbors are. Right. And there was a duplex next door and I looked it up and the owner was some nonprofit based in Raleigh and here. Well, supposedly had offices here. called both numbers. Nothing. It's supposed to be for people with developmental disabilities. And I didn't see any activity at that, at that location either. So it's in our backyard. No, it's in our front yard. It's all around us. Cause I stumbled in some grift too. Well, just because your organization says nonprofit doesn't mean you're an angel. Somebody's profiting. right. Somebody's getting the CEO pay. Somebody is getting a staff. Nonprofit means you're working for the community supposedly, but if you're getting a million dollars and your CEO gets $750,000. It's not really what your is profit. It's okay, but it's nonprofit. So, okay, so that's my concern with you know, this rush to funding and this ⁓ You know We are generally a Christian nation that we want to give somebody a hand up. We want somebody to eat We want somebody sheltered right, but then you need to ask the hard questions. Do they want to be sheltered number one? Number two, are they content with that lifestyle? and what other services do we need to give? It's not just about a roof over somebody's head. And that's why it takes time between one person at a time. Well, and that brings us to the next worthy discussion of mental and behavioral health. There was a partnership with Alliance Health mentioned as well as Capri Valley. Of course, they did partner with Capri Valley and Methodist with the new medical school. that on chairman Devere's assertion that We are going to train and retain doctors here. That's everybody's aspiration for this thing right now. We're to have a medical school. We're going to have a whole bunch of them. Yeah. Reality is different. Well, I can't my bills looking at the aspirations. Right. So we'll go from there. Public safety. was a discussion again about the 911 Center. Of course, discussion of the military community. Everybody knows we're next to Fort Bragg, the largest base and the largest in the world. We have attrition out of the military about 7,000 people a year leaving. We're only holding on to about a third of those. So how do we make life worth living here in Fayetteville, Cumberland County? that's of life. what did you see there? there's always been a lot of chatter with Aquatic Center, Aquatic Center. weather. Isn't that one straight down on the river? There are pools. So there's one in Hope County. Okay. So then we as Humberland County residents use the one right on the other side of the county line. I don't know how that would work cooperation wise, but you know, I do know that what governments don't do well is work together. I mean, we haven't seen collaboration between our own city and county to this extent in 20 or more years. I would do an exploratory to see if hey, Maybe Cumberland County, instead of sending billions of dollars to, um, that's what it Well, there's no price tag assigned yet. So let's be fair. It could be million with an M still. 999 million, but whatever. But I mean, maybe there's like for those people that want to use it, maybe the, um, the Cumberland County residents who want to use the aquatic center could pay, you know, $20 a year or something. I think Hope County would be wise to do that. Cause as far as I know, uh, they could barely pay their light and water bill in that place. So wouldn't that be beneficial? And then everybody would have their aquatic center. It wouldn't cost those of us that aren't going to use an aquatic center. Or if I do use an aquatic center, I go to the gym. So if the county uses taxpayer money, they want to create an economic driver. They want to create economic impact. Right. Okay. Like with the Crown Coliseum, want heads and beds, want hotel rooms, you want restaurants occupied. So I think Cumberland County is not looking at Hope County as a partnership because we go. I-95 right here. County doesn't really have any of that. Other things. Just out of curiosity, an aquatic center, what revenue would that bring to Fayetteville, North Carolina? Especially since there's one down the road. So it's not like people are going to come into our Is that a regional one though? See, I don't know. Let's go out there one day. It's huge. I know that. I've gone past it. So, hey Pam. So Pamela, when's the last time you went swimming? I'll wait. Yeah, well, it's too far away for the Eastern residents of Carmel County. I agree with that, but we can't, we, I think we had Ms. Janine Ackles on here and she was talking about east of the river, east of the river. You know, just because you choose to live in a rural area of town doesn't mean we need to bring the town to you. I think there has to be some responsibility, you know, of the citizen. I'm not making her mad. want to know, you know, I don't. And that is part of, know, so, and I know Pamela and Darden Jenkins and some other people, are advocating for the aquatic center, but how often have you used that? often have you, how often do we go swimming here? We have public pools. So, you know, what is the, what's the value? How much are we expected to spend for, I don't know all these, I don't know a lot of people that compete in swimming. Maybe was that a thing in high school? I don't She amuses. Oh, come on now, Pamela. You're not a senior citizen yet, are you? No. No. Anyway. Well, I'm glad you have a pool that you use. Health Flex has an indoor pool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's for therapy and stuff. And like she said, the senior center has the indoor pool. Okay. So, I just, you know, you're talking about a multimillion dollar project. that we already have a problem in this community with completing projects or getting them done correctly. I don't mind a multi-million dollar project if it does multi-million people. You know what mean? I don't want to have a multi-million dollar project to accommodate a thousand people. Yeah, see that's what I'm getting at is the demand. What is the true demand for an aquatic center because there has to be other regional ones around. let's a road trip. Anybody who wants to go to the aquatic center? Send us an instant message. Let's go out to the aquatic center and help mills. We'll ride a bus. No, not really. We have cars. We have cars, but we'll get the cars. here at the resource center. Let's drive on up there and check it out. See how often it gets used. BYOB and lunch is on you. There you go. Okay. So Pamela says very small other cities and towns have nice indoor, not Fayetteville. Well, Fayetteville has to remember that we're not a little town anymore and we have larger city issues, but ⁓ In my book, I'd like to prioritize utilities and infrastructure to bring the tax base that we can afford this. No questions asked. the aquatic center literally is 20 minutes on road. For Rainford. I mean, from while I live in Pima. Well, but if, so I think our friend lives across the river. Uh, so that would be like 45 minutes. Well, the good news is you can jump on 295 The Loop and you can flip right around there. You're just not gonna let me have this one, are you? No. No. Now it's a bit looped. you right on over to... Okay, fair enough. All right. Damn well, soak it all in. Because we... I love your channel on social Soak it all in. Yes, don't be mad at us. Yes. well, and I will say something. ⁓ I mean, I like horses. Well... I think we should have a horse center. Speaking to economic impact. and things like that. One thing that I plan on raising at the next Civic Center Commission meeting, ⁓ we are operating on an old set of books when it comes to economic impact. What does that mean? The Crown Coliseum operates at a deficit, so they lose money every year. Right now, that money being lost is backstopped by a 1 % food and beverage tax. So when you go to the restaurant, I collect an extra 1 % that goes to the county. to pay for capital expenditures at the crime. So buildings, maintenance, whatever. Doesn't the, I have question. Does the crime complex have like rooms that you could rent for like meetings and things like that? Are they affordable? Ballroom stuff. I don't think they have smaller, I'm sure they might have some breakouts. don't know, but I can get back to you I I've seen smaller rooms and I mean. So my, the last several meetings that I've been in when I. had the right people from the Oakview management group that manages the Coliseum. You know, it's like, look, what does it take to get our facility to break even or make money? Right. Because if that food and beverage taxes repealed, we're essentially going to be giving three and a half to $4 million of our tax money from property taxes to subsidize anybody that goes out to see a show. Okay. I don't want to see that. what, something I discovered that was alarming was that the justification for giving that money to the Crown is that the Crown brings $35 million a year in economic impact. Okay. I hope that's true. Well, see, here's the thing. I don't know, because that's a number that I've known for 10 years. So I know that nothing gets cheaper. Well, wait minute. If the impact was so great, then why are all the hotels that are around the Crown Coliseum dilapidated? That's a good question. Because I would think if I was bringing in $35 million a year and I was an investor of a hotel, I would build myself a really nice hotel next to the Crown Coliseum because there are so many people coming there. I don't see it. Ideally, we'd like a convention center type hotel like the Embassy Suites. But again, you've got a whole area that is downtrodden. sort of right now. Now they are making an effort to establish a different corridor to put some overlay districts there so that it's for zoning and keeping it to make it look good. Time will tell. I was gonna say downtown nothings. I love downtown, love going downtown. Wouldn't it be great if we could expand it? mean the Redditt District 2 is part of downtown too. The Crown Coliseum is part of District 2. Let's build up that area so make it a destination when you come here you go to the town and then let's go visit the little downtown and it all benefits as opposed to cramming everything downtown where people don't want to go downtown because it's all cramped. Well I will make one note I have been through the downtown several times since the new police chief took over and I will say there is a much more police presence down there. Yeah well chief is going to be a police chief much longer. Oh boy well maybe we should have him on before he leaves. I guess it's Cumberland County Sheriff, not the Chief Sheriff, yeah, yeah, not the Chief of Police. I'm like, what did he do? Okay. another, so again, back to state of the state of the county, we had discussions of economic growth and innovation. Again, that stuff that gets in the weeds. But one thing that jumped out that Chairman DeVere said that I liked, they now have public financial dashboards to see where our money's going. So it's something that's available to us on the web. that they have been adamant about live streaming their meetings and holding regular press briefing. So I will say that that effort shows with this board. That doesn't mean there's not other room for improvement. Right. So anyway, we do. We have district one and we have at large positions in November. There will be two Republicans, two Democrats for the two at large seats. And then there's no Republican running for district one. So the people who won their primary, Mr. Evans and, know what, I got that backwards. Charles is running for at-large. he's going to go up against the two Republicans. then Sheila Cuffee and Glenn Adams are the ones that are advancing to November and they don't really spend much on a campaign because they're pretty much in. Congratulations to them. So one nugget that I've seen over and over and it's a warm in your heart sound bite. We fully funded the schools. What does that mean? Well, let's break that down. The schools are always going to ask for more, more, more. If you give them more. then they're gonna start off at the more number from last year. They're not gonna be incentivized to cost cut or run a better, more efficient, because every government agency we know just gets better with more budget and more time. So. I think schools should be funded based on performance. Absolutely. They should compete. That's what an opportunity scholarship is breaking away. to make. So, Cumberland County has lost over 12 to 1300 students in the last couple years. specializes in opportunity scholarships to come in and like do a class or invite students so that they have to hear what it is because when, as soon as somebody says opportunity scholarships, say, that's taking away money from the public. The students, yeah. And the students, but that's not true. It's actually giving money to the students to pick the school that they. will excel in the fact is the school doesn't get money until a couple of weeks into the year when they actually count how many students are there. Right. Then they're paid based on the number of heads in the seats. But here's the thing. can be done quarterly though. Well, you switch schools or something like that, your money is there. It should be at least twice a year. It's only once right now. ⁓ What was I going to say? Bless you. The opportunity scholarship does not take away funding from the public schools. wasn't given. You weren't going to get the funding if the kid wasn't in your school. Right. So it just doesn't. It's a that's a moot point. Now, my problem is fully funding those schools. Is our school board incentivized to stand up to public pressure and close schools? Because we have 12 to 1400 students fewer in our system now. Imagine that's a whole high school. Okay. Imagine Terry Sanford being wiped off. That's how many fewer students we have system-wide. Hold on just a second if I may. So we have 1,400 less students, but does that mean that each class has a lesser amount of students so that the teachers can pay a pension so that possibly their scores go up and maybe the classes were so overcrowded before that that's why we have kids that are failing. Yeah, so see to me we're fully funding something that needed to be shrunk to begin with. So we fully funded to the level that they're operating now. So did we just fully fund go schools basically? And I don't believe that you can't close, read Roth's classical and E.E. Smith and absorb them in. Where are the teachers going to go? They're going to go with the students. The excellence doesn't come from the four walls they sit in. The excellence comes from the teachers and the environment that's fostered by this people. Did somebody say they were gonna get rid of the classical program? They can do it in another building. I don't see why not. Reed Ross was not a classical school in its whole career. It was just a regular high school up until, I want to say within the last 20 years. I understand that, but once it became a classical school, the kids there at that classical school do you explain Is it a school of choice? get the, you kind have to apply to get into it? Yeah. Well, and there you go. So you can apply to get into the school that's now located on XYZ. I just to make sure that the classical school doesn't go away because the classical, it may go some to another poor wall, but the classical school. Program needs to stay because those kids that go there do exponentially better than your kids or you can Close the classical school and give them opportunity scholarship and find a private school that meets their needs Okay, because so one of the problems with public schools is that Leandro decision that basically said Public schools have to be fair and have to give everything to everybody all the time that is hamstrung our public schools With requiring them to have all these and they're not keeping up. We had Leonard Bryant talking about taking a lawsuit against the schools because there are certain kids with IEPs and other things are just being fallen through the cracks. So it's not necessarily a factor of they don't have the money, but it's there being. So imagine if we had six fewer schools and Leandra is saying they must all be equal. That's six fewer schools to focus on. Okay. Let me ask you a question. What's wrong with three trust schools? Cause I don't know. I think it's just an old campus. So Well, there's a couple of factors. was ⁓ number of enrollment and it was the facility and how much it would cost to maintain it. So it's a whole ball of wax. They're probably so reuse on a school building. Who knows? They might just sell the property. It belongs to the county school system. So they could give it back to the county to sell it as surplus property. Or ⁓ maybe they could put offices. I don't know. But see, the whole point of closing these schools is twofold. It's the lack of enrollment and it's too expensive to maintain all these schools. We had an $800 million bill to upgrade them. And I think they can get it down to 400 if they close. Okay. See, I don't follow the school stuff anymore. Well, we're going to be inviting ⁓ Jackie Warner and some other people on the show. So we can, I want some insight from my school board. I mean, we have some good people on there. But I don't want them afraid. I want them to run like they don't care to get reelected. I want to see them take a stand because I had actually had a conversation about these people. Okay. There's gotta be something going on in there and I don't know what it is, but if you think about it, our county commissioners get paid how much a year? Mid twenties. Okay. These people are spending over a hundred thousand dollars. To get elected to a position that pays $20,000. Something... The math ain't math. Okay. Well, I mean, it's contributions and things. I mean, that's not a mystery. I didn't spin that, so full disclosure. I mean, I'm just wondering. What's your point? I don't know. So we have these people... The school board get paid or is that not a paid position? That I'm not sure of. I just want to know what's going on behind the scenes that we're not seeing. I want, um, what is, what is guy's name that goes around? The guy from the Learing centers? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I want to find out why people are spending a hundred thousand dollars. Politics. mean, money is the mother's milk of politics. We all know that. And it's not even about politicking anymore. It's marketing. Who's got the better message and how to get it in front of 300,000 people in Cumberland County. I don't see. So you're alleging possibly quid pro quo that there people are contributing and then they are getting Oh, you're pro builder or pro whatever. Okay. just said, what's wrong with being pro development? Nothing is wrong with it. I'm not saying that it is, I don't know. just look, I would I would not imbue anybody's character or their... I'm not imbueing anybody's character, I just wanted to know what's going on behind the scenes. Well, I wouldn't in general. Case by case, there are certain people in certain positions that I think need to be looked at closely. Okay. I mean, and that's the truth. That's why we have Dave Auditor, Auditor Bullock coming down here to Fayetteville. I've seen some chatter about Hope Mills, that he's trying to audit Hope Mills. So, I mean, hopefully we'll have our reckoning. I hope so. We just need to figure out, do we have citizens? What happened to the citizen policies and doing what's for your community? That doesn't exist anymore. I understand that the state level or federal level or whatever, but here in our community, I just, like I said, $100,000 to get voted for $20,000. Game over. Well, look, it's the what it is. You can't change it neither can I. It was one of the lines. Because you got to market to 300,000 people. Okay. And people support your position, they're going to want to help you. One person gave me a campaign contribution and I was very appreciative. And you know what he told me? He looked at me and said, it shouldn't cost you money to run for office to help us. And that's it. I mean, it's as simple as that is that people in the community should support. And you know what I would say? Well, it'll be looked at like anything else. Thanks. That's all. If you have character, but people of low moral standing, like we do have some people, we have people that haven't even filed finance reports from their first time running in office. And this is their reelection. Yeah. Go through and look at County Commission City Council. There's and there's a level of just Whether they don't care whether they don't know which is a parent, but you don't know you yeah You don't look first of all some of these guys can't even form coherent sentences. Okay. I know I'm not I'm just saying English language sometimes to these guys as a foreign concept, but second of all, you know They just very flippantly don't file these reports that everybody else feels compelled to do. Yeah. Well, if you don't file the report, then you don't have to say on paper that somebody did give you 50 grand so that you would vote a certain way because they're not filing reports. So look, what did I say about the nonprofits? I'd rather spend, if we're going to give them $10 million allocated to nonprofits, we need to spend a hundred thousand on making sure that we have a system to check them. So hopefully not another position inside the we're just talking. I'm not using anything. Yeah, I can and I will. So, okay. So, ⁓ everybody joining us today, we appreciate you watching now Monday we welcome Ms. Olivia cook. She is a regional leader with people for people and organization focused on community development and grassroots engagements. That'll be fun to unpack that. And then on Wednesday we will have Chairman Kirk DeVio. So we will see you all on Monday evening. Have a good afternoon.