Dear Editor,

I would like to comment on the letter from Bradley Hardy in the March 4 edition of the Ripple.

Hardy clearly has an ax to grind with two of our current commissioners. He seems to still be upset over school funding in the current Yadkin County budget. He claims that Kevin Austin and Brady Wooten slashed funding for schools, when the fact is, funding was not cut in the current budget. In fact, if you read the minutes online at the county Web site, you will see that Austin and Wooten were in favor of increased funding for the schools, but ended up giving in to two other commissioners in order to get a budget passed.

So Bradley Hardy, I must ask, where is the anger for those other two commissioners? It does take at least three to pass a budget.

It also takes three to delay the jail. Who is the second and the third vote because Austin can not vote on anything regarding the jail at the Hoots Road site? The fact is, there is nothing any of the commissioners could do to further or delay the jail project while the citizens were afforded their due process guaranteed by our Constitution.

But of course, as Austin pointed out in his column of Feb. 26, you progressives have no respect for our Constitution.

We all have great reason to appreciate Austin and Wooten. Their hard-nosed stance at budget time last year saved the taxpayers over half a million dollars. Hardy is complaining about $27,000 that was not even their fault? Ridiculous.

Commissioners Wooten and Austin had a legal right to obtain legal counsel since this was an issue that involved the county and the county pay for said counsel. This was not an issue that was of some personal matter of either of these two Commissioners.  After all didn’t the county attorney James L. Graham seek out extra legal counsel. Hardy neglected to mention the county has wasted $98,790.79 paid in lawsuit expenses so far on the jail project lawsuit. Bell, Davis & Pitt, PA lawsuit expenses $84,637.57 and James L. Graham lawsuit expenses $14,153.22.

In the future I would suggest to Hardy that he educate himself more about the procedures of how county business is conducted. One thing that would be very helpful which I thought was a no brainer is it takes three votes to pass anything. How can you blame two commissioners?

I voted for Wooten and Austin and I’ll do it again because they are the only commissioners that have listened to the people.