Hope Mills’ Board Commissioners and the head of each town department met for a dinner workshop Thursday evening to discuss priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.
Interim Town Manager Chancer McLaughlin said the aim of the dinner and open dialogue with department heads was to help demonstrate to those involved the achievability of putting together a feasible budget.
Mayor Jessie Bellflowers says he wanted the town to work together to create the budget. “We are going to do this together,” Bellflowers said. “This is our budget. It’s not a board of commissioners budget, it’s our budget.”
“We have some tough decisions and are going to have some hard conversations,” he continued. “But, by God, we are going to do this together.”
Finances
During the meeting Thursday, McLaughlin and Finance Director Drew Holland outlined their top priorities, which largely overlapped: working towards a possible tax increase and finalizing the town pay study.
McLaughlin said he wants to focus on the possible tax increase due to the change in the tax structure in Cumberland County. The new tax structure will leave the town with a $1.9 million dollar deficit in the fiscal year 2025-26. This means that the upcoming fiscal year 2024-25 will be the last time to prepare for this change.
Holland said one way to prepare for the deficit is to put current sales tax into reserves. He does not want to use sales tax to fund town projects, which he noted the town has done for the last few budget amendments.
Another way to prepare for the deficit, according to Holland and McLaughlin, is a proposed tax increase.
Holland said it’s been almost 10 years since the town implemented a tax increase and he wants to have a proposed property tax increase to help pay off future costs for the town.
McLaughlin told the board that they wanted to raise salaries for town staff — including the police department, who made their own plea last month — in early 2023. The board, however, voted to reject a 4-cent property tax hike. The proposed tax rate would have increased the tax rate to 50 cents per $100 of property valuation. McLaughlin said that the average increase would have been an additional $8 a month for the average Hope Mills homeowner.
The proposed tax increase led to heated discussions. Board Commissioner Elyse Craver raised concerns about the possible tax increase, specifically pointing to senior citizens and residents who might pay for services they may not be using.
Mayor Pro Tem Kenjuana McCray and Board Commissioner Joanne Scarola rebutted her point, saying that all Hope Mills residents pay an education fee as established by Cumberland County, even if they do not have children. McCray also said that the town needs to have more wiggle room in order to not cut projects or events.
“It takes money to do stuff in this town,” Scarola said, agreeing with McCray. “Stuff is not getting cheaper, it’s getting more expensive. We can’t stay at status quo and people are expecting that. We cannot stay at status quo with the current money we have. It’s impossible. We have to raise taxes because otherwise, else we aren’t going to have all the things we do need.”
Craver argued that Hope Mills’ money had been spent on things the town did not need, while other priorities demand greater attention.
“I think our policeman, our fireman…our roads and streets, we need to take care of that stuff and those departments before we go and spend thousands of dollars on a splash pad or something else to spend ARPA money,” Craver said.
There was confusion between Craver and town staff about the usage of funds and how certain funds could only be used for certain projects. Craver asked how American Rescue Plan Act funds were used for parks and recreation projects but not to increase salaries. Holland and McLaughlin explained that the ARPA funds would be a one-time use and the town would have to find that money separately the following year.
“It’s obvious that this board is going to vote for a tax increase,” Craver said. “But I think that if we budget our money better and stop wasting money, and I see it all the time, we could do better.”
Town administration
The top three priorities for the town’s administration include creating a new administrative assistant position, increasing training and remote work availability, and increasing the travel budget.
Human resources
The top three priorities for the town’s human resources department include digitizing the department’s materials, streamlined HR processes, and an employee self-service portal.
Stormwater department
The top three priorities for the town’s stormwater department include contracted cleaning, outfall maintenance, and continued support of town infrastructure projects.
Planning department
The top priorities for the town’s planning department include buying new vehicles, adding another zoning/code enforcement officer, increasing training, filling the planning director position, re-establishing the department’s own planning board and hiring someone to create the GIS mapping for the town.
Inspections department
The top priorities for the town’s inspections department are staff retention and professional development.
Fire department
The top three priorities for the town’s fire department are to unfreeze three firefighter positions from the 2021-2022 budget, increase the automotive maintenance budget, and increase salaries.
Police department
The top three priorities for the town’s police department include increasing pay, increasing staffing levels and adding more vehicles.
Public works department
The top priorities for the town’s parks and recreation department include finishing current projects and preparing for street repairs.
The current street projects include Woodland Hills, East Patterson Street, Creek Clearing and Pringle Way. The Woodland Hills project, which needs to repair a failing stormwater system, replace and resurfacing the road, has been estimated at $1.98 million. Currently the funding for the project is less than $630,000.
According to Sisko, Pringle Way, the street, needs significant work. Its project has gone out to bids twice, and has been unsuccessful both times. He hopes to revamp the application and put it out for bid again later this year. With initial estimates, he believes this project could cost approximately $1 million.
Don Sisko, the Public Works director, says that while they technically have the budget to carry out all of the projects, they wouldn’t have any money for emergency road repairs if something came up.
The department would also like to add a few new positions as well: a public safety building maintenance technician and a street division operator.
Operational requirements for this year include town hall lights, rotary wheel balancer, bridge repairs with engineering support, replacement of an asphalt reclaiming trailer and installation of a dam drainage system.
Sisko says the N.C. Dept. of Transportation is currently assessing all the bridges in Hope Mills.
Sisko said the town also needs to start looking at creating a new town cemetery. There are, at most, 427 plots left in the two town cemeteries, he said, so the board must decide if they want to open a new cemetery or to stop providing those services.
Parks & Recreation department
The top priorities for the town’s parks and recreation department include finishing the inclusive playground and splash pad, renovating tennis courts, expanding pickleball courts, creating a new senior center, and finishing construction of Heritage Park.
More than 70% of the playground, which had its grand opening in September, is ADA-accessible, according to a 2023 press release. For phase two of the inclusive playground and splash pad, the department wants to install shaded areas, picnic tables, a specialty wheel-chair swing, a concrete pad, and landscaping. The total price for phase two would be $180,000, but the town is looking for donations.
The current tennis courts are in danger of being closed by the town due to being unsafe in accordance with ADA accessibility standards. Lamarco Morrison, the parks and recreation director, said he wants to resurface the existing tennis courts and add sports lighting and additional lines for pickleball. This project would cost $55,000.
Morrison also proposed a new project in the form of a Hope Mills Senior Center and Gymnasium. He said this building would not just focus on being a center for senior citizens, but would also address the growing need for spaces for those with specialized needs. This project would be a 15,000-square-foot building with three multi-purpose classrooms, a gymnasium, pickleball courts, two offices for senior programming staff, and a new maintenance shed. This project would be located at the Golfview Greenway property off Golfview Road.
Morrison would like to spend $1.2 million from ARPA funds, possible General Obligation (GO) Bonds, and then look for state grants. GO bonds are municipal bonds backed solely by the credit and taxing power of the town. GO bonds are issued with the belief that a municipality will be able to repay its debt obligation through taxation or revenue from projects and are voted on by the residents.The total cost for this project would be $6.2 million.
Morrison also stated he would like to finish the Heritage Park project this year as well. A bid has been accepted, but more decisions on Heritage Park funding will come at the next regular board meeting on Jan. 22.
Outside of these specific requests, there were also talks about increasing town staff, hiring interns and expanding town hall. The town hall currently does not have receptionists and several town department heads said many in their departments are having to double up on priorities.
For example, the two technicians from the inspections department have to answer the phones for town hall. However, because they are gone from the desk during that time, the phone calls for their own department often go to voicemail.
Another topic that came up was hiring a collection agency to stay on top of inspection fees. According to Fire Marshall Bobby Carter, as of Thursday, $4,100 remains currently uncollected. McLaughlin acknowledged that for many fees, the town cannot fully enforce people to pay them, so a collection agency may be able to create the legal action to kickstart some of those paybacks.
At the next budget meeting, on Feb. 5, elected officials will present what their priorities are. On Feb. 19, the board will meet with the Cumberland County delegates to discuss if there are funds the delegates could ask for regarding any projects. The board would also like to meet with the Cumberland County Commissioners to see if the county could fund any projects.
The town will hold a budget retreat on March 7.
Contact Hannah Lee at hannahleenews@gmail.com.