BAYBORO — The 2026-2027 Pamlico County budget is a monument to waste. The Pamlico County Board of Commissioners were elected by the citizens of Pamlico County, and they should be accountable to us. Instead, they seem to think the employees of the county are more important than the citizens. This budget being approved is based on building an empire.
Always be on the lookout for line item expenses that show up for the first time. This year there are several. One is a new $150,000 budgeted line item for career development. Who would be against that? Spend precious tax money to send county employees for additional training. Sounds good, right?
Unfortunately, Pamlico County already does this very well. People take jobs in Pamlico County, acquire needed experience to qualify for a better paying job in any of the three adjacent counties, and off they go. Craven County with 100,000 people, Carteret with 70,000, and Beaufort with 44,000, all have more people, with more homes and personal property to tax. Therefore, those counties have larger payrolls and more money to spend on employees. Any thinking citizen knows that it is a fool’s errand to try to keep up with the bigger, richer adjacent counties. Pamlico will lose that game every time.
When our sheriff Chris Davis was first elected, he started a group undercover operation with the adjacent county sheriffs so the miscreants in each county didn’t have an advantage of knowing who the undercover officers were. Perhaps the commissioners could form a similar cooperative. A governmental buying group to allow Pamlico to participate with adjacent counties to get better prices on vehicles when larger quantity purchases are made by the group.
Here’s an idea. Maybe new county residents who are building “starter castles” could create a GO FUND ME page to keep the multi-generational families from having to sell off their properties and move to higher population counties due to pending property tax increases soon to be codified in the Pamlico County budget.
Gordon is a frequent contributor to The County Compass
