Good job sending employees’ kids to camp, Beaufort County. Next time be more transparent

David Travis Bland
·2 min read
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Your average Beaufort County taxpayer wouldn’t blink an eye at $11,000 for “county employee child benefits” on a county budget of almost $140 million.

In tax money spending uncovered by The Island Packet, reporter Karl Puckett showed how Beaufort County spent $11,000 to send some children of county employees to summer camp for about two months.

Good job Beaufort County. That’s how you retain talent and snag up good workers looking for a job — provide them with benefits and perks like any worthwhile private employer does.

This would be a different story if the county sent only its council members or top administrators to summer camp on the taxpayers’ dime. Now, that would be a moral outrage.

Maybe the story of $11,000 spent on summer camp for employees’ kids enrages you because those employees got child care you didn’t have access to. While the camp is more of an employee perk, one could call it subsidized child care.

Great! South Carolina needs more subsidized child care. The program could provide a framework for a future county summer camp program for low-income families in the general public.

The county should be praised for its negotiating and spending skills in getting the price of summer camp to $30 a week for a single kid and less when parents send more kids. That would be an amazing price for a single mom or dad working two jobs while their kids are out on summer break.

Next time around, Beaufort County, just say upfront that you’re going to spend $11,000 for an employee child care summer camp program and make it crystal clear.

That’s the most glaring problem with summer camp program: The county wasn’t transparent about it. They shouldn’t have tried to “disguise” it from the public as an email said sent to company employees.

Public facilities also shouldn’t be closed to the public, or at least the public should know about the closing in advance, but that issue seems like a fixable part of what this whole situation is: Growing pains for a beneficial program that could lead to better opportunities for Beaufort County kids.

If you’re the type of person that is morally outraged that the county spent $11,000 to help its employees and let some kids have some fun, you should check out this story called “A Christmas Carol.” You could learn something from the fellow named Scrooge.