Commissioner Young explains 'no' vote on Flat Rock Playhouse funds

From the Times-News:

Commissioner Larry Young surprised everyone at a board meeting earlier this week by voting “no” to disbursing $50,000 in county funding to the Flat Rock Playhouse. Just minutes earlier, he’d voted against a motion by Commissioner Grady Hawkins to keep the money in county coffers.

The reversal was all the more stunning because Young, once the board’s preeminent Playhouse critic, had agreed Nov. 29 to support the money’s release if Playhouse leaders used the money to hire a new fiscal manager, raised more local funds, established a group of business people to advise them and convinced Flat Rock officials to match the county’s $100,000 contribution....

On Wednesday, Young said he voted “no” out of frustration with two fellow commissioners and because he wanted to make sure the county knew what it was doing with the money. After voting against Hawkins’ motion to keep the $50,000 in the county’s general fund, Young said he intended to ask Bill McKibbin, president of the Playhouse’s board of trustees, some questions.

“I was going to ask Mr. McKibbin whether he’d hired a new financial administrator and whether (Playhouse Artistic Director Vincent) Marini was still going to run the show,” Young said. “Then I was going to say we need to release this $50,000, but we need to earmark it to go toward their debt, not as operating capital. But then Tommy Thompson and Charlie Messer screwed everything up.”...

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