alleghany

Bro
You are absolutely correct. Regardless of others opinion the county commissioners have the last say about funding. And they certainly have blown through some money. I suggest you people who are speaking out of your butts go to a commissioners meeting and ask for full explanation of where your tax money is going . Next thing you people will be complaining about is the salary of the sheriff and deputies.

It is very interesting to read all the whining of the posters on this forum. Yes, our elected sheriff is a joke. Always has been since he was the sheriff,s Secretary,s Secretary way back in the day. But you seem to conveniently forget that he was duly elected by the residents of this country by a wide margin. Did these whiners even vote? Our county deserves the law enforcement we elect. Good or bad. When you stop making an election for an important job like the head law enforcement officer of the county a popularity contest maybe you will get a sheriff with a spine and not a glad handing politician. Before you run down an entire department maybe you should consider changing leadership. With the proper direction I'm sure the officers could actually do their job instead of seeking a new photo opp!

This conversation should really be about the hard spending down of the county fund balance and rising annual budgets over the past 4 years by the rep board of commissioners. The sheriff is doing his job, No matter who the sheriff is there will be complainers because being sheriff isn't a job that generally makes people happy. Don't let the sheriff be a distraction from the real problem here.

This thread is outrageous. None of you have a clue about what your are talking about in regards to the county giving the Sheriff's Office money. Do any of y'all have a television set? If so, do you have cable? If you can answer yes then tune in and watch the commissioner's meetings. One month the commissioners talk about having an abundance of funds, the next month they are trying to explain away audit results. Funds have been given to DSS, the hospital, the wellness center, they want to fund a new ball field. You have the previous chairperson beret a county employee for attending a class necessary to do her job. Next you have the previous chairperson saying he had to attend a workshop out of town and guess whose dime he went out of town on? All of you want to talk smack about the sheriff's department, I suggest the next time either of you need law enforcement you call a crack head instead. To the persons commenting about the resource officers: do you have a child in the school system? Any county school system? If not, your biased opinion shows your intellect. Why should the high school and Sparta Elm be different from Glade or Piney??Are the teachers not as qualified? Or could it be the kids from those 2 schools are "more elite" than the kids at Piney or Glade? Shame on all of you. I suggest you contact any of the parents, grandparents, sibling or spouses who have lost a child or other family member to a school shooting. I'm sure those family members would gladly put any of you in your place.

Being relatively new to the county, I was a little perplexed by the county commissioners funding a reoccurring cost, ie....pay raises and manpower increases with funds from the reserve account. WHAT THE HECK!! Did you guys not at least have a day of county commissioner training?

Always be leery of a politician that is always referring to you as "buddy" and who is always slapping you on the back. He is not what he pretends to be.

Some people are barely getting by now, especially with all this virus mess and everything shutting down. We will most certainly see a substantial property tax increase. I hope it was all worth it for those two. I sincerely hope and pray Carter, our new manager can pull a rabbit out of his hat and fix this mess without our taxes going through the ceiling. He has the experience and knowledge from what I understand and he tells it like it is.

You really can't blame Maines. He inherited the same bunch of loafers Sheriff Squeak had. If we weren't keeping them up at the sheriffs department they would be in the welfare line and we would still be keeping them up.

From what I have learned, Evans and Maines are very close. Explains the current mess. When it's all said and done, we will pay dearly for their indiscretions. I used to have a lot of respect for Evans, Not anymore!

You are probably right 007bro. It seems everything went to @#$& when he was chairman. I think the power went straight to his head.

eyecandy 3624 It would be good to know the exact amount of $$$ interum mgr Mark Evans added to the county payroll in the short time he was being paidto be co manager. Someone needs to ask for this and make it public. Might turn out he is not so conservative after all.

Y'all are being too hard on him. He is just trying to make our county safer. Yes our taxes are going up but it ain't his fault. If you want to blame someone, blame Mark Evans and the other county officials for giving him everything he asked for. They control the money.

He was afraid of his shadow in high school. Not much has changed. A cousin of mine who is no longer with the sheriffs dept said the night Alfred Billing went on his murdering rampage (according to the sheriffs dept) but no deputies were actually harmed in this imaginary tale and there was not one single bullet hole in any vehicle, Maines and Hawks would not go or let anyone else go to alfred's house to arrest him that night after the rifle range road rampage (where they barely escaped with their lives). Instead they suggested they all go back to the sheriffs office and view the body camera footage and come up with charges for Alfred when they arrested him later or knowing Alfred, when he turned himself in. In the meantime, Alfred flees to Florida and a real sheriff has to go in and get him causing a lot of injury and pending lawsuits against this sheriff for doing a job Maines was too scared to do. Always let someone else do your dirty work and then lie and tell everyone how brave you are.

Little man did nothing under sheriff Caudill. Squeaky fired him and then hired him back. He barely made it through police officer school the second time. He should have stuck with mowing yards but he is a smooth talker and it has paid off for him. The county voters put him in, so sit back and no whining while he runs your tax bill through the roof

The commissioners have some big decisions coming up, but they got themselves into this mess and they will have to get themselves out of it..... at our expense of course. I am pro law enforcement but it only makes sense to start cutting positions there first. They can make due like all the other depts. Crime is not running rampant in Alleghany county, if it was, as the sheriffs dept says it is, why is so little being done about it it? They want to look like a big dept in a podunk county. Open your eyes commissioners and quit funding this little dept like it's Charlotte Mecklenburg police dept. WE CAN'T AFFORD IT!!

The little man will say whatever he has to say and do whatever he has to do to get re-elected. A true politician. Speaking of church country girl, the only time he shows up is when it's election year. Then he's singing in the choir like Forest Gump.

A friend of mine went into the sheriffs building to renew his concealed carry permit a while back and had to wait in the lobby for a minute or two. He said it sounded like a big party in the room across the hall from the magistrate's office. When someone opened the door he said there were a half dozen deputies sitting around shooting the bull and telling jokes. Is this what we are paying for? I work hard for my money. I don't have time to sit on my butt and play around. The county commissioners need to fire every one one of them. What a waste of taxpayer dollars.

This county does not have the tax base to support all the wants and needs of our sheriff. The county commissioners need to just say no and should have said no several years ago. This is not Mecklenburg or Forsyth County. We have no industry and the poor property owners shoulder just about 100% of the budget. I hope and pray our new county manager has the guts to stand his ground and get the county departments back in line with the budget. Of all the departments, the sheriffs office has had their want list fulfilled more than anyone. If you read the paper and the arrests on the back page it doesn't seem like there is much more going on than there was before his manpower increase.

I can see the need for community involvement Gobblerman but I agree with you. Our property taxes went up last year and will most definately go up again this year even worse. We now have deputies at every school which some of the largest, wealthiest counties don't do. Why? the kids are important but has crime gotten so bad in little ole Alleghany we have to do this? I can see having an officer at the High School and one at Sparta...but Glade and PIney? What do they do all day to justify their position. I think our little old sheriff has talked the commissioners into this using fear and "what if"? I think we need deputies at our churches more than the schools. If the county budget is so bad, it looks like to me this should be the first thing that is cut and let the patrol deputies check the schools like they used to.

The whole department really is a joke. The sheriff and his "man secretary-hawks" are both scared of their shadow... it's easier to pose for the paper than actually do any law enforcement related job. Much safer unless you pull a muscle posing for a picture.