Mayor Ben Winston: Paying His Campaign Workers But Not the Bills for the City of Lumberton

If you watched the six o'clock news, you saw Mayor Ben Winston, dressed in his Sunday best, holding two checks, making claims that the City of Lumberton has the funds needed to pay the $19,792.35 Lamar County jail bill that has not been paid in over a year. It seems that a year ago, under the direction of Mayor Ben Winston, the City of Lumberton stopped paying certain bills. Just the other day, the board held a special called meeting to settle an agreement to repay $266,198.07 on a defaulted MDQ loan. The mayor and board scrambled to get an agreement in place because the MDQ was granted a tax lien against the City of Lumberton's sales taxes. As I stated time and time again, Ben Winston wants to serve as a Lamar County Supervisor but for the past year, he has made a decision to NOT pay the bills for the City of Lumberton. He's a prime example of poor leadership.

While watching the interview, several points caught my attention. While Winston was talking from the left side of his mouth, he said

“On the medical bill, hospital bill and on the inmates, we owe them $3,232.35, and on the regular jail bill 16,560.00," Winston said. "Got both of the checks here, and these checks were not written after (Seven on Your Side) called me, these checks were written before you called me."

Question: If the City of Lumberton had the money to pay the jail bill then why were the checks in the mayor's office and not submitted to Lamar County to settle the delinquent bill?

Later in the interview, Winston said

“We had to be sure that we had the money, and we got the money from the accumulation of revues coming in that helped us out a whole lot, especially some that was unexpected from Azalea Gardens."

So which version of this tale tell is actually the truth? Did the City of Lumberton have the money or were they not sure they had the money? I guess we will never know since the checks have yet to be submitted to Lamar County to settle the debt. Another question: When did Mayor Ben Winston get approval to sign the two checks he was holding on television? There was a special call meeting held on October 13, 2015 at 2:30 pm and I don't recall there being an agenda item to approve payment to Lamar County. Just a few months ago, Winston told the Public Works Director, Daniel Davis, that he would not sign a $1,000 purchase order without board approval. In case you didn't know, the Public Works Department can no longer get parts on credit because the City of Lumberton has also failed to pay those bills under the leadership of Mayor Ben Winston. I've said it before and it think it needs to be repeated, when you tell the truth, you don't need a good memory.

As I watched the news, I looked in astonishment because Ben Winston is one of the main witnesses that will be on hand Monday, October 19, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. in Lamar County to take the stand to testify against me because a delusional city employee said I slandered her name when I said she was a liar and was incompetent. Winston does not have the ability to tell the truth in front of a camera so how can he be expected to tell the truth when he's on the stand? While Jay McGraw, Tommy Dukes, Cora Rogers are being called as witnesses in the case, they should be in the office of the person they're defending and asking why the bills are not getting paid. Every month, the board, with a nay vote from Alderman Quincy Rogers, approve payment of the bills for the City of Lumberton. The board members need to find out who made a decision to withhold payment on bills they approved. This is a very slippery slope and they're focused on the wrong thing. All of them have jeopardized their bonds but they're so focused on shutting my blog down that they don't realize their livelihood is in jeopardy because they're not questioning the fact that bills are going unpaid despite the board approving their payment. I think I will take a copy of this interview to court with me because it proves that I was correct when I labeled certain city employees and elected officials as incompetent. Case dismissed.