Taxpayer abuse and mismanagement
Years of non-essential spending and fraud with taxpayer money, and no one held accountable. I will use 30+ years as a CPA to fix the Town's books.
In 2025, the public was informed that senior Town management and some Town Council members had been caught up in an abuse of taxpayer funds scandal that spanned many years. It included multi-million dollars in non-essential spending and fraud.
Taxpayer money was used to fund a $330K Dancing Queens video for council eyes only, $1,200 for designer Ray-Bans, $150K for the Town Manager’s ego book, grad school tuition for a councilmember, cushy consulting jobs with Town vendors, expensive steak and wine dinners, and uncontrolled spending. Who would have thought giving out over 850 credit cards to staff with lack of oversight would be a problem?
The North Carolina State Auditor conducted an investigation. In summary, they said the Town leaders were negligent in their role as leaders, Town Staff did not follow basic accounting procedures, ignored whistleblowers, engaged in misappropriation of taxpayer funds and have denied accountability. To date, no department head has been fired or disciplined because of the scandal.
When elected, I will use my 30+ years’ experience as a senior accountant and CPA to help get the Town’s financial house in order. As could have been predicted, a half-billion dollar annual expense budget that was not given proper oversight was misappropriated, mismanaged and cost taxpayers millions in waste and fraud.
To add to this taxpayer insult, Town Council has voted for over 60% in property tax increases over the last three years.