Special Called Meeting Town Board Cleveland, NC - Budget Planning 4-21-2022

 

Cleveland, NC town board met tonight 4-21-2022 for a special called meeting to discuss budgeting for the coming year. Mayor Pat Phifer, commissioners (Gerald Osborne, Danny Gabriel, Travis Summitt, Richard Taylor, John Bradford), town clerk Kelly Rodgers, finance officer Rebekah Brown, police chief Jon Jessop, and maintenance supervisor Jody Bare were in attendance. 

Before discussing budgeting, the board voted to pay a contractor for work in the town park of $2860 or $1680 more than the original estimate for the work. The job was estimated at and approved at $3500 but ran over with a final total of $5180. 

Work at the park ended up costing more due to stain needing to be painted on by hand rather than being sprayed on. This increased labor costs.  Since more stain was used, the cost of supplies also increased. The first buckets of stain at Little Shaver's ran $45 per bucket. Prices went up to $75 per bucket on an additional order. 

The contractor picked up supplies as needed. Summitt said, "Moving forward we've got to be careful." He explained that not all contractors would be honest with an open tab. 

Although the work is completed at the park shelters, the contractor will be back to power wash the concrete slab. There will be no charge for the power washing, because a bucket of stain turned over.

Taylor said that the work looked really good and invited everyone to stop by the park and check out the improvements. 

Water and Sewer Prices are Scheduled to go Up - Tax Increases are Undecided

As far as budget planning, the key issues of interest to the community are likely that water and sewer prices will go up five percent. 

Property taxes may also go up. Phifer mentioned an increase from 28 cents per one-hundred dollars to 32 cents. 

Osborne said that he was "against adding any taxes." He said that he was concerned about the "load" on people currently with the state of the economy. 

New Job Positions Being Considered

The town will be considering adding an employee in maintenance. 

Bare said that the maintenance department needs another employee in order to keep up with maintaining the new sidewalks, new decorative lights and potential new road sign poles.

Also, at this time, the town has to pay for contract labor to flag when the maintenance crew works in the road. With four employees, there would be the extra person to wave the flag or turn a sign for traffic. With another person on the payroll, the cost for contract work would be reduced. 

Jessop said that the police department needed another hire. He said that the new hire could serve as the patrol supervisor and also as a zoning and code enforcement officer. Adding another officer would decrease paid part-time and also allow the police department to groom someone from within to take on leadership duties in the future.

Currently Rodgers takes care of code enforcement, and Phifer said that the town "never puts teeth into what we put on paper." He said that they can't send Rodgers out to homes to enforce zoning rules and that the town is suffering from "growing pains."

"We've talked about this problem for years," said Summitt.

New Expenditures for the Upcoming Year

The town is looking at adding road signs to coordinate with the decorative light poles. Some traffic signs like stop signs could be put on the road signs. Phifer said that he was currently looking at the sign options and that letter sizes could be six inches and some larger in height. He would like to see an actual sign, so he will know exactly what they will look like when/if purchased. 

Phifer also brought up purchasing Christmas decorations for the decorative light poles. 

Osborne said that the board needed to look at doing some fence work at the wastewater treatment plant area. The town can get a lower price on chemicals (and voted to do that) if the company with the lower prices can get their 18-wheeler up to the facility (which they can't currently). He said that the cost would be around $5000 and that the cost would be made up by around September with the savings which would then continue on for the next year with the lower prices. 

Maintenance will be purchasing items like an edger and a generator. 

The meeting tonight was just a planning meeting, and Phifer said that board members needed to come prepared with the numbers for their departments. He said that, in the past, town clerk Kathy Payne just did all the work and brought in the budget sheets. Then, board members would sign off or ask for any changes needed. 

A date and time was not set for the follow up budget meeting.