Andres Leandry
Grantham University
Summary- Mecklenburg County, one of North Carolina’s biggest county experience fiduciary crisis due to inconsistent management and political party changes in the county’s management board. The inconsistent way of managing the county let to many programs being mismanaged, unnecessary layoff or job elimination in an effort to control Mecklenburg’s County budget.
“Mecklenburg county one of the largest county in North Carolina” Managing 4 Result (2009) like any other state/government run agency experience fiscal challenges impacting county level programs. The county managers are the elected officials who are normally in office for two years if not reelected to serve another term. With a constant yearly growth of 3%, the county’s infrastructures demanded improvements to keep pace with the population growth. These infrastructures improvement are high cost dollar items, which caused the county’s budget to be considerably exhausted due to the infrastructure cost being one of the highest. The constant change in political leadership led to a continuous change in policy and how the county programs and money was spent and also how monies would be raised to cover cost. The primary method for raising the county’s budget came from raising taxes on the populous of Mecklenburg’s county. This was a very unpopular and unwelcome action for the people of Mecklenburg. The county board also used a ineffective method of conserving monies and adjusting the budget by conducting across the board cutting of jobs and reduction of the workforce, this is a clear indication of not having a solid plan or process for effective managing of the county. In 2000 Harry Jones was elected to serve as Mecklenburg’s county manager. Mr. Harry Jones visionary man and had a vision for managing the county and how to improve it in such a way that regardless of the political climate or political party in charge, all would follow the plan. His plan was to develop a method were decision could be made in a more effective and productive manner. This structured method is called a balanced scorecard (BSC). This is a performance measure process that “measures financial, customer, internal