By Miles Layton

COLUMBIA — After Monday morning’s joint meeting between the Tyrrell County Commission and the Board of Education broke for a scheduled recess to go into closed session for continued mediation, retired Superintendent Nelson Smith stayed behind in the meeting room to walk a group of teachers, parents and community members through what he described as the full history of a bitter dispute over where — and how — to build a new $62 million school.

For nearly an hour, Smith answered questions about missing funds, a meeting he was removed from, and why the county and the school system have reached what several in the room called the biggest mess in memory.

Reminder: Both boards are set to reconvene at 5 p.m. today, Monday, July 27, in the media center to continue the mediation.

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“I could do so much good for children”

Smith, who spent decades in Tyrrell County Schools before retiring, said he got involved after learning the district had secured $62 million in state funding.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I could do so much good for children. So much good,’” Smith said. He agreed to join a steering committee at the superintendent’s request and sat in on early meetings where architects presented design concepts for the new building.

From the start, Smith said, he believed the school needed to be built on land the county already owned, because he had been told directly by a commissioner that no county money was available. “We have no money, we can’t do anything. You got to keep it on the campus,” Smith recalled being told. He said he was so committed to that position that he warned the board and superintendent by email that he would withdraw from the committee entirely if the county was ever asked to contribute even half a million dollars.

Smith said his understanding changed when he came across language in the county’s own budget meeting minutes describing a $500,000 request to purchase land for the new school, along with a “potential funding structure using lottery funds and restricted sales tax revenues.”

That discovery, he said, connected to a financial document he had already drafted showing how recurring state funds could cover loan payments on a new gymnasium — a loan the school district could not legally take out, but the county could. Smith said he shared that plan with the state Local Government Commission in Raleigh, the county’s finance officer, and then-commission chairman Tommy Spruill, and that all three signed off.

“That sounds good,” Smith recalled Spruill telling him. “We will do this.”

Smith said he now believes those same recurring funds — not new debt — were meant to cover construction costs, based on his review of the county’s audited financial statements. “It showed that the previous year and the present year, they received over half a million dollars from these funds to be used for construction or land acquisition,” he said.

Removed from a meeting

Smith described being invited to, and then physically excluded from, a county commission meeting between the superintendent, the county manager, the school board chair and vice chair where a possible land swap involving an elementary school property was being discussed.

“I was embarrassed. I was hurt,” Smith said. “First time in my life that I’ve been ejected from a meeting.” He said his briefcase was left behind and had to be handed to him through a doorway after the door was locked.

His wife, Joanne Smith, a retired educator, interjected to explain why she believed her husband had been removed. “The only reason he got kicked out of that meeting is because he knew about these pools of money that the county commissioners were not being forthcoming with the school system about,” she said. “He knew these pools of money existed and that they were designed for construction! And land acquisition!”

Joanne Smith went on to describe, in detail, four separate funding streams that flow from the state to the county and, in some cases, on to the schools: Article 40 sales tax revenue, of which 30 percent must go to the school system by law; Article 42 revenue, of which 60 percent must go to schools for construction and land acquisition; Article 44 revenue, which the county can direct to public education, economic development or community colleges at its discretion; and lottery proceeds, which she said go directly to the school system.

“That’s usually the smallest pool of money,” she said of the lottery funds, “but they get that directly to the school and can use it for how they see fit.”

Confronting the county manager

Smith said he later requested a private meeting with the county manager to ask directly why he had been removed. “If that’s what we’re going to talk about, then this meeting’s over,” Smith said the manager told him, standing and walking toward the door before Smith asked to move on to other questions.

Smith said he also learned in that meeting that the county’s gymnasium debt had been paid off in December 2021 — four and a half years before Monday’s meeting — yet the county continued receiving roughly $500,000 annually in construction-designated funds after that debt was retired. “I don’t know where it is,” Smith said. “I can’t find it.”

Denise Comito told the group she had spent four hours the previous night reading through county audits dating back to 2021 looking for the missing funds. “It’s not there,” she said. “I’m hoping that will come out of these meetings.”

Smith declined to confirm a separate rumor, raised by another attendee, that missing funds had been traced to an out-of-state bank account. “I heard that very same rumor,” Smith said. “I don’t have any proof on it. So personally, I think we need to be cautious about that.”

“It may border on deceit”

Smith stopped short of accusing county officials of wrongdoing but said he believed the lack of disclosure amounted to bad faith. “I’m not going to use the word, but I’m going to just suggest it: what they’re doing may be deceitful,” he said. “Could they be deceitful? Maybe.”

He said he believes commissioners are using an unrelated elementary school property as leverage in ongoing negotiations over the new school’s construction, tying its release to the county’s cooperation on funding. “I believe what they’re trying to do right now is try to hold that over,” Smith said. “I don’t know. I believe that based on all the things that happened in court, what was said.”

Smith said the dispute is now headed toward mediation and, if unresolved, arbitration at the next Superior Court session, a process that could take months and would still be subject to appeal. “That’s going to be a tough choice for the board of education,” he said.

Calls to move forward — and to remember in November

Not everyone in the room wanted to dwell on the history. Board member and community volunteer Ken Cherry urged attendees to stop assigning blame. “You really need to just kind of make up and start stop looking back and blaming people for what happened,” Cherry said. “Start looking ahead for what we can do to fix this.”

Joanne Smith agreed the county’s commissioners were not acting out of malice, but said the numbers still troubled her. “Most local boards give 25 percent of their budget for public school. Ours gives eighteen percent,” she said. “You have to prioritize educating our kids.”

Teacher Darren Rhym drew a direct line between the funding dispute and accountability at the ballot box. “The county commissioners were voted by us in the community,” Rhym said. “What you take from this meeting, you need to take to the polls in a hundred days and get rid of the people who are really the problem.”

Angela Cahoon, whose son left Tyrrell County for Oklahoma, said the dispute reflects a broader concern about the county’s future. “He would have loved to raise his daughter here,” Cahoon said of her son. “He says nothing’s ever going to change.”

Former Tyrrell County Commissioner Gordon Deaver, invited to speak by Smith, recalled a very different relationship between the county and its residents decades ago, shaped in part by state environmental regulations that once slowed development to a crawl. “We have to look at each of us as taxpayers,” Deaver said. “We have to look from both sides when we start looking at things.”

By the meeting’s end, Smith said he remained committed to keeping the $62 million from reverting to the state. “Not on my watch,” he said.