Our Opinion: Elm City residents deserve answers on budget blunder

If Elm City commissioners truly wanted to show their appreciation for town employees, why make them unwitting scapegoats in a clumsy cash grab?

The town board voted 2-1 last month to approve a $1,056,071 budget that includes $59,760 in pay raises for administration and $20,000 for public works, along with $6,300 in year-end bonuses to be split between five employees and the five elected commissioners. Yet the pay bumps weren’t a priority when Elm City published its proposed budget, a draft Mayor Tawanda Moore prepared in her capacity as town administrator that made no tweaks to employee wages.

A 4-1 Board of Commissioners gave tentative approval of Moore’s proposed budget on June 17, though the spending plan couldn’t be adopted until residents had the chance to weigh in during a public hearing scheduled the following week. The administrator’s budget set the property tax rate at 45 cents per $100 in valuation.

Seven days after signaling that residents could expect a 45-cent levy, commissioners voted to authorize the raises and bonuses and increase the tax rate to 55 cents. The last-minute change strikes Elm City property owners as a budgetary bait and switch. Who could blame them for feeling misled?

Town workers will see more money on their pay stubs, but paying for raises and bonuses with an eleventh-hour tax hike drives a wedge between these public-sector employees and the residents they serve. That’s unfortunate — and unfair. Elm City’s elected officials, not its hired staff, bear responsibility for the budget-busting expense.

Vanishingly few people would begrudge an hourly worker the wage increase or incentive bonus he or she has rightfully earned. Yet Moore made no effort to justify the extra pay to the taxpayers who will have to provide it. Did employees perform exceptional work that qualified them for merit-based raises? Was Elm City’s staff chronically underpaid when comparing compensation with what’s on offer in peer communities? Mum’s the word — your guess is as good as ours.

When raises hit taxpayers in the pocketbook, a responsible local government leader makes a compelling case for the expense and works to secure public support. But Mayor Moore’s comments from the commissioners’ dais suggest a desire for a tax hike prompted the pay bumps, not the other way around.

Moore told commissioners the 55-cent rate “was proposed and suggested by the treasurer’s office.” It wasn’t. N.C. Department of State Treasurer spokesman Dan Way told Times staff writer Christopher Long that an employee in state and local government finance who works with Elm City never made a suggestion on the tax rate.

Board members also voted June 25 to hire Moore as town administrator. She held the job on an interim basis when she compiled the proposed 2024-25 budget. If commissioners had treated the budget process as a performance evaluation, it’s crystal clear that a promotion and raise wouldn’t be the outcome.

“There are addition and subtraction errors in this budget that you are trying to push through,” Gabe Merando told the board. “This is not appropriate. You cannot vote to pass this through.”

Yet commissioners did just that, rubber-stamping a hastily rewritten budget with apparent arithmetic problems and a tax rate 10 cents higher than the levy proposed on June 17. So Merando appealed to a higher authority : Wilson County Superior Court.

The Elm City resident filed a motion seeking an injunction and temporary restraining order against the town, alleging board members violated state statutes that outline municipal budget requirements. Superior Court Judge Lamont Wiggins declined to issue such an order when he reviewed the motion last week. Further developments are possible in a hearing scheduled Monday.

Merando’s fight with Town Hall has already earned neighbors’ respect and admiration. In a letter to the editor published Tuesday , Russell Michael compared Merando’s activism to Paul Revere’s famed ride. “Small-town America needs more Gabe Merandos,” Michael concluded.

Mayor Moore and the Board of Commissioners owe Elm City residents an explanation — and an apology — for the budget bait and switch.

The post Our Opinion: Elm City residents deserve answers on budget blunder first appeared on Restoration NewsMedia .