Leftists release bug boxes at Mecklenburg budget vote (06-04-2025--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:29] You know me. I only work three hours a day, as we determined yesterday. And so this was quite out of the norm for me to be watching the Mecklenburg County Commissioners meeting. Ran about four hours or so last night. And so I was watching it because they were getting ready to vote on their $2.5 billion budget.

[00:00:56] And that's a lot of money. And it's got a property tax increase in it. And so I wanted to hear what these commissioners had to say for themselves. And I turn it on and I'm watching and they do the, you know, the proclamations, the recognition for public art. Public art, by the way, is taxpayer funded art that is required in like all projects.

[00:01:24] You got to do a 1% budget allocation for a project. If it's a county project, 1% has to be for public art. And so it's a way to highlight all of the crap that gets purchased by whoever it is that makes those purchases on our behalf with our money.

[00:01:43] And then they decorate them all around town. And in some unfortunate instances in the past, these art installations have been honestly mistaken for garbage and have been thrown out. So anyway, so I'm always curious about that sort of thing. And then there were like the proclamations. It's in case you weren't aware. Did you know June is pride month? Yeah.

[00:02:08] So they did the pride proclamation. They did a proclamation. I don't know what was trying to recall. There's a lot of proclamations. Anyway, they ran through those. They brought people down to talk about the proclamations. And then they brought down the final proclamation people and it was gun violence awareness month or day or gun violence prevention day.

[00:02:35] Anyway, there's another proclamation against gun violence, right? They were, yes, I know like county commissioners taking a bold stance against gun violence. So they have some people there and they're talking about it. We're against gun violence. We are too. Oh, everybody's against it. And then a woman comes down and by the way, there was, as far as I could tell, there were no media at this meeting last night.

[00:03:05] Because if there were, I wouldn't have been the only person reporting on what it was that occurred at the very beginning of the meeting here during the proclamations. Well, it was probably about a half hour to an hour into the meeting because you've got to sit through all of that stuff before you get to the $2.5 billion spending plan. Anyway, so a woman comes down and she identifies herself as Megan Hill, a CMS art teacher. And things just seemed off.

[00:03:35] Hi, my name is Megan Hill. I'm a public school art teacher at Registrate Television. I'm so sorry to interrupt you. Just to confirm, you're here to speak to the Gun Violence Awareness Month proclamation? Yes. Okay, I apologize. Please continue. Yes. It's weird. Thank you.

[00:04:28] Thank you. Like, what's her game she's running here?

[00:04:58] Gun violence prevention is what would stop that child from ever believing that a gun is something that would answer their pain caused by the broken system. I teach in Charlotte's high need schools where we are under-resourced and over-policed. That imbalance is exactly what leads to these situations. We do not need a new training center. What we need are social workers, nurses, school counselors, and trauma-informed educators. Oh, now I know what she means by facility. This is the Cub City people. The Antifa people.

[00:05:28] We need investments in literacy, nutrition and stability. We need care, not combat. Yet, when our schools are begging for lunch money, you are quietly moving funding into a facility. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. That's not really a first fraternity training center. It's also being involved with militarized police subs, things like that. And this just feels dishonest. I do not want our schools used to mask this. I do not want my students grabbing up in a world where safety is defined by surveillance and force. You've moved money before. You can move it again.

[00:05:59] I teach my students to speak when something is wrong, and that's why I'm here. Please listen. Please act. Thank you. Oh, wait a minute. She has supporters in the audience. She's with some people. This will become important. To confirm, this is the time to speak related to the Gun Violence Awareness Month proclamation. Yes? Oh, another speaker. All right. I was also a teacher, so thank you. Today, this county has recognized the national problem of gun violence.

[00:06:27] I am proud of our commissioners for doing this. Too often, young people are the main victims of guns. Sadly, the generation graduating from college right now is often called the school shooting generation. We have failed the youth by failing to prevent gun violence from spreading. This county could take their proclamation farther and do more to prevent gun violence in its schools. Right now, our commissioners are actively funding a project that would bring even more guns to a community college.

[00:06:54] Right next to a CMS school, our tax dollars are... Uh-oh. Oh, no. I'm not speaking to this. Yeah, your remarks are out of order. This is not the time to reform for these... This is about gun violence. Hold on. Hold on. Right next to a CMS school, our tax dollars are paying for more guns. We are told that safety measures will prevent guns from leaving cops. We're going to have to ask you to leave the podium. That's the same argument that pro-gun people say. Oh, my goodness. Just lock up the guns and school shooting...

[00:07:21] Right now, you're in violation of NCGS 143-318.17 by disrupting the meeting. You're subject to being escorted out of the meeting chamber and charged with a misdemeanor if you don't cease talking. Oh. Cut off a mic. Nice, Vilma. Yeah. So, all right. So, as soon as he said, you're... You could be charged with a misdemeanor if you don't stop talking. They all shut up. There's a lesson here.

[00:07:51] There's a lesson. That's the board chair, Mark Jarrell. You got your... You have to leave. Mr. Officer, I'd like you to escort this young lady out of the chamber. Thank you. I'm sorry. She dropped something. Uh-oh. Yes, they did. I saw her dropping. Can you hear what they're saying? That's George Dunlap and a couple other commissioners, and they're like, she dropped something.

[00:08:23] Yeah, and George says, yeah, there were some other people. They were up there. They've been dropping stuff. I don't know what it was dropping. And, officer, apparently there's some things being dropped. Oh, copsy! Who dropped it? There was someone sitting up here on the right-hand side. Thank you. Thank you. What? So, I think if there are items being passed around with bugs or whatever we got going on, I'd like the officers to please...

[00:08:53] Wait a minute. Bugs? First thing I thought was like, what are they wiretapping the place? Like, what's going on? Are they eavesdropping? No, no. Actual bugs. Please check that out, please. Give him some up there. If it's going up here to my right. They're alive. So, they've got... They put... So, that was the box that was being passed around up top. Bugs?

[00:09:18] Right where you are at the top of the stairs, officer, those five people in that section, right over here, were passing around some level of box. Exactly. Signs. There's a sign. Here's the box you're talking about. It's a box of signs. They're just signs. Uh-huh. Signs. Yeah. They're signs, right. Nice, Mark Jarrell. Nice. They dropped something over here. Well, there are bugs up here, she said. I think they...

[00:09:48] There's the box. They got it right there. They dropped several. All right, we're just gonna... We're gonna wait until we can get order, maintain order. It's a shame that we do this in front of the young lady like that. It's just shameful. Shameful. Shameful. You can leave. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

[00:10:13] Anybody who's out of order, if you speak out of order without being recognized, you will be escorted out of this chamber. Period. There's a playtime and place to be heard. Anyone can sign up to speak. And if you don't sign up to speak, from that where you're sitting is not the place to address this body. We'll have order. We will not have disruption. Good for him. Here's the problem, though.

[00:10:41] The McLemore County Commissioners are 100% Democrat. And the people that are dropping all of the bugs up there in the boxes, they are radical leftists. Right? Like, these are people that are sort of your street troops for the Democrats. Democrats. Democrats for building a law enforcement training facility. Because we don't want trained law enforcement. Well, in their mind, they don't want any law enforcement.

[00:11:10] Until they take over and then they would clamp down and control people. That's the idea. That's why I call them temporary anarchists. They're not actual anarchists. They don't want to have a society of complete anarchy all the time. They just need it temporarily so they can take over and then they can impose their authoritarianism on others. That's all. So they just want a different form of government that they control, not you. They are impotent LARPers.

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[00:12:37] Located in Mint Hill, just off 485. Mail orders are accepted too. Get all the details at createavideo.com. All righty. So the Mecklenburg County Commissioners holding their $2.5 billion budget adoption vote last night. Media was not there at the beginning of the meeting, which honestly, I mean, I don't blame them because it's just an hour of, oh my gosh, we're doing such awesome things.

[00:13:06] Are you great? Oh, you're great. I'm great. Oh, I am too. Look at that. We're all so great. There's all of that kind of garbage that goes on at the beginning of the meetings. The vote came like an hour and a half into the meeting, but the beginning of the meeting, when they were doing the gun violence prevention or gun violence awareness month proclamation. Yeah, these two, one is claiming to be, and apparently somebody went and found her on Facebook or LinkedIn or something, and she's still a teacher.

[00:13:36] She's an art teacher, confirmed. I think it's a, is it Regency something? Anyway, then the second speaker gets up and starts talking about Cop City, what they call Cop City, what is referred to as the Central Piedmont Community College Law Enforcement Training Center to train law enforcement officers so they are better at their jobs. But to the, the LARPing Antifa folks, you can't have this.

[00:14:05] And there's environmental also, there's an environmental component. Remember the one down in Atlanta, the Cop City protests in Atlanta, they were like so angry at the deforestation and all of that. So in protest last night, they speak on a proclamation. They get ruled out of order and then start screaming, and then they get ejected, escorted out. Now, that's all well and good.

[00:14:29] However, they dumped a bunch of crickets in the chamber, which then had to be taken care of. Before we move on with the agenda, I understand we should probably take a recess for cleanup. Okay, everybody, unfortunately, we're going to have to take a 10-minute recess to be able to clean up the bug situation that we've got working, apparently.

[00:14:55] So we will reconvene at 7.55, let's say. I want to thank environmental services for coming in. Thank you so much for your help, ma'am. And then we're going to move to the next portion of the agenda, which is public appearance.

[00:15:17] Okay, so the environmental services folks came in, and in order to clean up, they vacuumed up the crickets. Good job, eco-warriors. Way to protect the environment.

[00:15:35] Dumping a bunch of live insects, which I thought you wanted us to eat, but you dump a bunch of these insects all over the chamber, and then workers had to come in and suck them all up with a vacuum cleaner, murdering them. Commissioners released a statement regarding the incident, quote, Mecklenburg County condemns any inappropriate or out-of-order comments or other disruptive tactics during Board of County Commissioners' meetings or any other public meeting.

[00:16:04] Civil public participation is a bedrock of democracy. The board has made it clear that the abuse of public participation will not be tolerated. I think they handled it well. I was happy to see the admonition from the board chair, Mark Jarrell. I'm glad there was no tolerance for it. I'm glad they got ejected, but that's not enough.

[00:16:28] You will keep getting more of this crap if you do not send a message to the people that want to engage in it. Slap them with the misdemeanors. You don't get to release insects into public meeting chambers while members of the public are there, because last night it was crickets. But in other venues, they've dumped maggots.

[00:16:57] This is a tactic I have seen multiple occasions before last night here in Charlotte from around the country. All various types of insects and creepy crawlies and such. And if you don't crack down on this and you don't do it immediately, you're going to get more of it.

[00:17:20] What's ironic about this is that the two speakers who prompted their removal because they were speaking on about stuff that wasn't on the item that they had signed up to speak about. You just heard Jarrell call the meeting back into order and like now we're moving to public comments. And that's where you should have made your stupid statements. You wouldn't have been ding, ding, ding off of the dais. You would have been allowed to make your comments. But you don't even know the basic rules of the people that you're coming to talk in front of.

[00:17:48] That's how little respect and knowledge they have of anything outside of their particular field, you know? Oh yeah, there was also a two and a half billion dollar budget vote. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News.

[00:18:16] It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.

[00:18:42] The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Tim, welcome to the show. Hello, Tim. Hey. Hey, Pete. How you doing? I enjoy your show. Thanks, sir.

[00:19:12] What's going on? I just caught a little bit of that last segment. Did you say they dropped crickets in the chambers? Yeah. Boxes of live crickets. Yeah. And what, did the environmental services come in and just step on them? No. They came in with vacuum cleaners. Vacuum cleaners, huh? Well... They sucked them all up.

[00:19:37] They could have just stepped on them and that would have really made them happy, but they'd have used pointed cowboy boots if they got in a corner, you know? Yeah, that would be a tough one. But no, yeah, they obviously are going to have to fire, or not fire, but to bomb the place, you know, with like, obviously insect killer or something. But they went in there in about 10 minutes. They ran vacuums over the areas and sucked all the, as many of the crickets up as possible. Some, I'm sure, did get away.

[00:20:04] And I heard you say that in the past they had dropped Trump supporters in places like that. Oh, no, you said maggots, not magas. Correct. Yes. My bad. All right, well, you have a good day. Was it really your bed? It was actually your bed. So lame, Tim. I appreciate the commitment to the bit in sounding like an idiot. No, that... Absolutely. He was all in on the bit.

[00:20:31] But, um, so I have Vilma leaks audio because this is an unrelated matter to the budget. Um, should I do this now? Hmm, two minutes. No, I'm going to move on to the budget. Um, so they brought in budget director, sorry, Adrian Cox. He made a brief presentation to the board about sort of the highlights or lowlights, if you will, of the budget here.

[00:21:01] The county's current tax rate is the 19th lowest in the state. And you can see the comparison to the other 99 counties on this slide. It is also lower than our neighboring counties and the three other largest counties in the state. Oh, see, so it's not that bad. We're better than everybody else. We have much lower rates. By the way, um, there is a reason for this because we have a larger property tax base.

[00:21:30] We have a, we have a larger tax base. We have more people. We have more expensive buildings. We have more wealth, right? We are a larger area. So there are all sorts of reasons for this. When you are a poor, less populated county, you have to have a higher rate in order to generate the revenue necessary to run the government. So as a, as Beckelia County has gotten bigger, our rate has gone down.

[00:22:02] So Arthur Griffin actually addresses this later on. Um, he then says state unfunded mandates equate to 16 cents on the tax rate. He listed neighboring and peer counties once again in their plans for tax increases for the coming year. Forsyth and Union County have just completed a revaluation and both of their managers are recommending increases over their revenue neutral rates.

[00:22:29] Forsyth, a 4.2 cent increase and Union, a 1.8 cent increase. Wake is also proposing a rate increase for the fourth year in a row this year for a quarter of a cent. Right. So the median, what it's going to go to now, um, the plan was for an increase of 0.96 cents, basically 96 cents per, uh, one, uh, per, well, they say, okay, hang on a second. This is WSOC TV.

[00:22:59] They, they, they, they're breaking it down into $10,000 increments. I don't know why, but it's, it's not, it's 0.96 cents per a hundred dollars of valuation. That's always how it's been calculated. For some reason, WSOC in their story, they've got it as 96 cents for $10,000 of home value. Regardless, when you do the math, it all comes out the same way.

[00:23:23] Right now, Mecklenburg County, um, has a 48.31 per a hundred dollars of property value. 48 cents, 48.31 cents per a hundred dollars of property value. And what that works out to be is about $1,800 a year for the median priced homeowner.

[00:23:47] The median home price in Mecklenburg County, $377,000, right? $377,000. You're paying about $18,21 a year in Mecklenburg taxes. You will now be paying $18,57 per year. Now, what is never mentioned in any of these discussions when you talk about tax increases is,

[00:24:14] and it's not mentioned in this story, they don't tell you what the current property tax bill is. Because a rate is just a rate, what does the person pay? Just like yesterday's discussion about teacher pay and, you know, 5% increases versus 2% increases, right? Those percentage increases or rate increases, they equate to different amounts of actual cash.

[00:24:41] If you make more money, a 5% pay raise nets you more money than somebody who makes less money and gets the same 5% increase. They actually don't enjoy as much money in their pocket. The other thing that's never mentioned is that this is just the county. The city of Charlotte takes up most of Mecklenburg County, I think, at this point. And so you have to also add in the city's rate and what people pay for that.

[00:25:11] The city property tax rate is $27,41. And that is another $1,033 on the median-priced house. So in other words, the median-priced homeowner is paying $2,854 a year in taxes. And that's just property tax. And that's just on the home.

[00:25:39] That works out to be $238 per month. Do you think you're getting $238 worth of value if you're a city resident? Do you think you're getting $1,857 worth of value from the county? But you'll be happy to know they have cut to the bone here, people. There's nothing else that they can cut. Not a single thing.

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[00:27:32] and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Going over the Mecklenburg County budget that was approved last night, it's $2.5 billion. $2.5 billion. I go away for like eight years, not to prison, but to Asheville, which is kind of the same thing, but not really. But I come back and the budget went from a billion to two and a half. What have you guys been doing down here? Everything apparently. And nothing all at the same time.

[00:28:02] So commissioners noted that the manager's budget recommended a one cent increase on the rate last year. But the county commissioners were like, oh, we can't possibly raise taxes one cent. It's an election year. I mean, sorry, the conditions don't warrant it. People are hurting. We can't do this. Inflation, whatever. COVID and everything. Okay. So they didn't want to raise it one cent last year.

[00:28:32] So they only raised it by like half a cent last year. But now it's not an election year. So now they got to pay the price. And by they, they mean you and me. We have to pay because we didn't pay last year. So now they're going to have to raise it a penny. Because otherwise, like they would have raised it a penny last year. And then only half a cent this year, I guess. Anyway, here's Susan Rodriguez McDowell.

[00:28:58] No one relishes raising property taxes, especially when doing so will always impact lower income folks the most as a proportion of their income. But we'll do it. That is why we provide relief as best we can. But it is the folks above the lowest threshold that get squeezed with no recourse. And I'm truly mindful of them. But that is why I advocated last year to push a half a cent increase to this year. So the increase last year would be more gradual over time. It's not.

[00:29:28] But it's not more gradual. It's the same. It's a half cent last year, a full cent this year. If you had done the full cent last year, you'd have done a half cent this year. It's not gradual. It's the same amount of money after two years. We are adding that half penny plus another half. Yes. And we have to also be upfront and honest about the fact that there will be more in the near future with a school bond increase that's coming up. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[00:29:58] Wait a minute. Are you telling me that bonds raise property taxes? No. Really? Of course they do. I've been saying that for 20 years. They've been pitching school bonds every other year, every third year. And it's like this is raising property taxes. Well, but the interest rates are so low. We'd be fools not to borrow a billion dollars here and a billion there or whatever. And the possibility of a transportation sales tax increase. A double whammy coming.

[00:30:28] A huge problem for us is our state and federal governments. They are both failing us. They are both conspiring to privatize to the point of crippling taxpayers. The county is the bottom of this hierarchy and your higher property taxes and sales taxes will be the result. Money flows to the most powerful. And that is how it is all being set up to stay. Hmm. I love me a good conspiracy theory. No, I don't. Um, and that's not even a good one.

[00:30:56] They're conspiring to privatize. What are you talking about? You know, you know how many tens of millions? Actually, it's probably more than that at this point. Hundred million plus. Of the Mecklenburg County budget goes to nonprofits. It's the same concept. You guys, you're doing it yourselves. You voted for it yourselves last night. You're like, oh, we do health and human services, but there are all these other nonprofits and we'll just give them grants so they can do it. Well, that's.

[00:31:25] How is that any different? Laura Meyer. She was the one who said that they're cutting it. They've cut all they can. This is these are deep cuts. They've cut all they can. There's nothing else to cut. Not a single thing. They did approve one hundred twenty five thousand dollars for the Charlotte Pride parade. Next year. That's in the budget. But they've cut all they can cut people.

[00:31:55] Also, they spend two hundred thousand dollars for sponsorship of the NAACP conference for ten tickets. Ten whole tickets that they get to they get to give to county staff. And Elaine Powell thought that everybody from the county got to go. And Dina Giorgio was like, no, it gets us ten tickets for two hundred grand. But that's out of this year's budget, people. This year's budget. So it's not part of the next year tax increase. It was part of this year's tax increase. All right.

[00:32:24] That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete Calendar show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.