Jerry Beckley blasts current county supervisor, seeks position

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. — Jerry Beckley, a Berkeley County resident and vice president of technology at Heritage Trust, recently sat down with The Bryan Crabtree Show, on WQSC 1340 and 950 AM, to discuss his campaign to run for Berkeley County supervisor as well as other issues facing the county.

Beckley says he is running because of his ideas of what a conservative republican really is, “Looking at what was being spent, we have a supervisor (Dan Davis) who says he is a republican, well he does not share my ideas of a conservative republican,” said Beckley. “He (Davis) aligned himself with the liberals, who were majority of county council, to keep 29 percent of tax relief funds, money that was suppose to go back to the people, Now that we have majority (republican) on county council we were able to get nine percent back in the budget.”

Beckley also feels that the budget for county is not being properly managed. “The supervisor controls all budgets, no matter elected or not, he controls the things that get approved in that budget and ultimately it gos to council for vote,” Beckley said.

Beckley indicated that because the budget is controlled by the supervisor, some important avenues are being neglected. “Looking at public safety, we have ambulances that have 275,000 miles on them and we have sheriff deputies vehicles with 150,000 to 225,000 miles on them,” said Beckley. “There was a situation that an ambulance broke down with someone in the back, and that person ultimately died.”

Beckley says, if elected, these will be one of his priorities for the county.

On the 41 Bridge

As we have reported earlier, there is a plan to replace the current 41 bridge, that has been put into limbo because of the proposed height of the bridge. Beckley claims that issue with this bridge is too many government entities rushing the issue.

“The problem you have with this, when you get different levels of government all together to try to do something common, you run into problems,” Beckley said. “They rush so fast to put this together, nobody sits back and says, what is the quality of life we are going to give the people of that area, and what is the value of doing this.”

Beckley believes the issues with the 41 Bridge could have been avoided with better lines of communications.

“Best thing you can do, to get information to the people, is to get out into the community, talk to elected officials and community leaders and spread the word,” said Beckley.

On Daniel Island

As we have reported, Daniel Island homeowners have filed a petition to leave Berkeley County and join Charleston County, after voting ‘yes’ on ‘Yes 4 Schools’ referendum, which they were reportedly told a new middle school would initially be built in the Cainhoy area.

On the show, Beckley said this is a failure of leadership and said he is listening to the residents of Daniel Island.

“If you listen to the residents of Daniel Island, they were promised something by the school district,” Beckley said. “Where you had a failure in leadership, we approved 198 million dollars for schools to go there, but then they waited two years to start talking about it.”

Beckley believes that the best way to convince the residents of Daniel Island not to leave Berkeley County is to build a satellite office so they would no longer need to drive to Moncks Corner to handle their taxes.

“If elected, I would budget for and try to get passed a full functioning satellite office in Daniel Island,” said Beckley.

To help pay for these offices, Beckley would cut some of the waste in the county.

“We have a lot of waste and duplication in Berkeley County, for example Water and Sanitation has the same departments Berkeley County does, they have their own procurement, human resources and maintenance departments. All of that will be merged together and streamlined,” Beckley said.

The primary for Berkeley County supervisor will be June 10.

To listen to Beckley’s interview on The Bryan Crabtree Show, click here.

For more information on Beckley, click here.

 The Bryan Crabtree Show airs from  8-10 a.m. on WQSC 1340 and 950 AM.  You can visit the show’s website by clicking here.  You can also catch Rocky D on the same airwaves from 3-6 p.m.