Lumberton Holds Public Hearing on Budget

Last night, the board held a meeting on the budget for the next fiscal year. There were some minor cuts made to the budget and there will not be a millage increase for the next fiscal year. There were three citizens in attendance for this meeting that lasted about 7 minutes. I noticed that Alderman Gibson was not vocal about the police department's budget. His reaction was a stark contrast to his feelings about the police department's budget from last year. They made $97,945 in cuts to the police department, but now that we have fewer officers, the city is paying more in overtime. When the police department was headed by Chief Fortenberry, the board would have a fit if an officer had 2 hours of overtime pay, but now that Dennis is the new chief, they don't care about all of the overtime that's being given in the police department. There's no limit on the number of part-time police officers a city can hire. So, why do we have officers working 70-80 hours/week?
If you add the personnel services for general government, public property department, street department and parks/recreation you get a total of $231,270 for all of those departments combined and it's $80,510 less than the $311, 780 allocated for the salary of police officers. After looking over the budget, I also noticed that the police department's budget exceeds the other departments in the areas of supplies, other services and charges. Everyone at the meeting was given an opportunity to ask questions, but just as I told Mrs. Bogle, what's the point in asking questions since they've already made their decision. They board didn't vote for a millage increase, and that's probably based on personal preference rather than professional responsibility. They also said they didn't want to raise the millage rate because they didn't want to burden the taxpayers of the city and then they turned around and said they believe there will be an increase in the water bill rate. FYI: Raising the water bill rates will not help the economic standing of the City of Lumberton. Any increase in the water bill rate must be deposited into the WSOM Account and used for the maintenance of the Water Department; therefore, the planned increase in water bill rates will not ease the financial strain of the city. The water rate increase is determined by the State, but I'm certain that Gibson, Crider, Hale and Johnson are planning on raising the rate so they can accumulate some surplus in the WSOM Account in order to borrow that money to pay for all the overtime in the police department and other needless expenditures at city hall. Even if the board borrow money from WSOM, they will have to pay it back once the tax money start coming in. Essentially, it like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Hopefully, when they hold the public hearing to raise water bill rates, more than three citizens will attend the meeting.