Dear Neighbor,

I am writing because you deserve the facts before August 18.

Smith won this seat by 373 votes. Nineteen thousand one hundred forty-eight to eighteen thousand seven hundred seventy-five. A single precinct could have changed the outcome. He used that razor-thin margin to vote for every record budget and every bond — not once voting no from FY2022 through FY2025.

The result? $876 million in new spending and debt in three years. Your share: roughly $7,189 for a family of four. County debt jumped 76% — nearly double — while the population the county serves grew just 5.6%. Every person now carries $2,838 in county debt before a single dollar of next year's budget.

They told you they cut taxes. They cut the millage rate 1.8% — and still collected $58 million more from property owners because assessments soared. That is a tax increase presented as a cut.

Where did the money go? Not to your roads. Commissioner Tom Knight — a former sheriff — put it on the record: we are $1.7 billion behind on road funding. Not to stormwater. Smith admits maintenance was deferred 20 to 25 years — then our streets flooded.

Instead: a $75.1 million administration building with a TV studio and wellness center. A headquarters sold for $25 million, leased back, then replaced with a smaller building for $75 million. An $18.1 million boatyard deal Smith moved — for land the seller bought for $8.9 million two years earlier. A $7.5 million grant to a nonprofit that raised zero dollars privately — Smith alone voted to keep paying it when the board clawed it back.

Smith's own colleague called the budget "a path to destruction." Smith admitted on the record: "We're spending money that we are not going to have. And we're running out of track and not slowing down." Then he voted yes. The FY2026 budget — $2.52 billion, the largest in county history — passed over the only no in the room.