He ought to run for Commish...

There's a fellow down the road in Fleetwood who has a mighty fine way with a pen. Over the last few months,  Ken Lynn has been penning epistles to the Jefferson Post's which never fail to take our sorry excuse for County Commissioners out behind the woodshed for a good thrashing.

His latest offering, which you can find here,  may be his finest yet. 

Hello, my name is Sam

Ashe County has a  new manager, but we're not sure where he's from. We do know Sam Yearick's party registration -- which is never a good thing for a county manager.

He apparently told the local media that he's a native of Ashe County -- the Helton community to be exact. But when, he was hired as finance director for Caldwell County in 2005, the minutes record he was a native of (insert drumroll here) the town of Hudson. We've reviewed our maps, and are pretty darn sure that Hudson ain't in Ashe County.

When the triumvirate of Ashe County Commissioners fired county manager Pat Mitchell earlier this year, Commissioner Judy Poe made a big stink to say that Mitchell was wearing too many hats. Mitchell held a teaching position at Appalachian State and served on various state economic development boards.

Yearick appears he has a closet full of hats, too. Interestingly, two of those hats never got mentioned in the "Hello, my name is Sam" news stories.

Back in October, he was appointed by Gov. McCrory to the Board of Trustees of Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute. But more interesting is his position as chairman of the Caldwell County Republican Party.  Here, you can see his smiling face on the Caldwell GOP facebook page.

On a positive note, Yearick was formerly an auditor with the North Carolina Department of Revenue and CPA. One can hope that he'll offer some friendly advice to Commissioner Gerald Price who has recently taken to fighting the 16th Amendment and challenging the IRS' authority to levy income taxes.

Denial Ain't a River in Egypt

http://jeffersonpost.com/news/home_top-news/2461229/BOC-terminates-Mitchells-appointment-3-1

Our fine Ashe Gang of Three can't decide on whether to revisit an annual budget six weeks after they approved it, can't communicate effectively enough to fire someone, have a rumored walk-out of county employees on their hands, and still can't tell us why they fired someone they begged less than two years ago to take the position of county manager. 

We doubt they could find their way out of a wet paper bag.

But, hell no, Commissioner Judy Porter Poe cries, they are not in political jeopardy, chaos or turmoil. And they say shame on anyone for second guessing their Tea Party asses.

They have had double digit unemployment for more than four years, no vision for digging out anytime soon and presently neither a county manager nor anyone at the helm of economic development.

They may not be in political jeopardy, chaos or turmoil. 

But their constituents are royally you-know-what.

Confidently leading us absolutely nowhere

If you've been in Ashe County more than 10 minutes, you know that the only thing more anticipated than the Second Coming is the widening of U.S. 221 from U.S. 421 at Deep Gap to the Jeffersons.

This week, Ashe Commissioners -- before mounting a secret coup to toss out the county manager -- queried the supposedly all-knowing Rep. Jonathan Jordan about what's going to happen to the project since the Governor and Legislature rewrote the funding formula for transportation projects this summer.

Jordan allowed there would be no delays, stating, “(U.S. 221) is going to be connecting us to urban areas where jobs are."

And, that begs a bucket of questions that apparently went unasked by the Commishes, so we'll ask them here:

Is this really your vision for Ashe County, Mr. Jordan? Is Ashe County to be nothing more than a far-flung bedroom community for Charlotte or the Triad or the Triangle? What happened to your jobs plan that you stuffed in our mailboxes during election season? We're pretty damn sure you were talking about bringing jobs here. 

If your jobs solution is building a four-lane highway so everybody can leave Ashe County then be our Moses and get out front: hit the the highway now and write when you find work, but don't be surprised when your letter comes back marked "Return to Sender."

"He's a first-rate, grade-A, number-one nut"

And the voters of Ashe County just re-elected this Commissioner....
Heaven help us.

http://www.jeffersonpost.com/view/full_story/22793668/article-County-commissioner-files-suit-against-sheriff--7-co-defendants?

We don't need no stinkin' jobs

We grimaced when we read this headline in the Jefferson Post this week: "Pitching Ashe County a Full-Time Job."

We couldn't agree more, especially when the county has chronic double-digit unemployment.

Funny thing is the Ashe County Board of Commissioners think it's only a part-time job. Pat Mitchell has been serving as both economic development chief and county manager for more than two years. In fact, if you go to the county Economic Development Office website these days, you'll get "Error 404: Page Not Found."
Pitching Ashe would be a fine full-time job for somebody. God knows there's plenty of work to be done.