Dander up over Garland’s budget — again

GARLAND — It may be the start of a new fiscal year, but talks regarding the Garland town budget have not slowed down since its adoption at the end of June.

Tuesday night, the Town Hall board room was packed with residents and board members, alike, for the monthly Board of Commissioners meeting. Resident Tim Register opened the public comments portion of the meeting talking to the commissioners about the budget amendments portion of the meeting.

“I’m not sure, really, what part of this meeting is about,” Register said in addressing the board. “I had heard by way of the grapevine that there was discussion about revisiting and setting a tax rate for the town of Garland.”

He continued by saying that there was “some implication that what took place when the current budget ordinance was passed was not handled correctly.”

Register, who had spent time researching the budget process, said he could not find anything that was done wrong by the town.

“I have spent quite a bit of time going back over and looking at the UNC School of Government’s interpretation of the budget process,” he told commissioners. “I can’t find anything in there where it was done wrong. Seems to be a little bit of a misinterpretation, I think, on the part of some folks that once you have a budget presented, that if you make any changes to it, you have to present it again and have another public hearing. And that is not the case.”

Register explained that the law stated that once the budget ordinance is posted by the town, a public hearing is held to give residents an opportunity to speak. That is exactly what the town of Garland did. But after that, the town commissioners can change the budget and tax rate any way they want by having a majority vote with a quorum present. Which, he said, is again what Garland did.

“You’ve done something good for the town of Garland,” Register said towards the end of his time. “You have increased revenues. If you look at the amount of money that’s coming in from taxes for this year, it’s more than it was last year. You’ve cut the budget and been able to lower the tax rate so that it benefits the folks of Garland.”

But when the line item for budget amendments came up on the agenda, there was only one thing that Mayor Pro-Tem Timothy Blackburn brought up — how much money was budgeted for the Sheriff’s Department.

Blackburn stated that during the work session/special meeting on June 20, Commissioner Jo Strickland said she was giving the Sheriff’s Department an extra $10,000 to accommodate for hours and pay for the deputies. But then he said that at the special meeting held June 24, Strickland corrected herself saying the admin budget line item was given the extra $10,000 because of the budget cuts, and that amount would not only be allocated for Sheriff’s Department.

Tuesday night, Blackburn explained that the line item for the Sheriff’s Department allocation showed $55,000 instead of $45,000, meaning $10,000 had been added to that department, which he believed was too much money to give only the Sheriff’s Department.

“The sheriff’s department did get $55,000 in the line item,” he stated plainly. “But we don’t have any employee drug screening. We can’t randomly drug screen our employees. So, we need to move some money off the sheriff’s contract and put some money in drug screening.”

Commissioner Ralph Smith Jr. asked why they don’t just pull the money for drug screenings out of admin instead, since “that’s what admin is for.”

There was no response to his question, and instead, Blackburn reiterated that both Commissioner Strickland and Commissioner Smith said the Sheriff’s Department “was not getting $55,000 the other night, but that the line item shows that they are” — which he believed was the real problem in the budget.

Strickland then asked how much Blackburn wanted to have removed from the Sheriff’s Department line item, and he said to bring it back down to $45,000 as previously discussed.

This led to a disagreement over what Strickland said at the previous meeting where she clarified what she did with the budget.

“You’re still confused as to what I said,” she told Blackburn plainly. “What I said was when I got down to the bottom of the budget reduction and at $0.48 (per $100 valuation), I still had 23,000 and some dollars. I had taken a cut in the $10,000 admin total budget. Well, through removing the police department, they lumped all that money into the admin budget. So, I took that $10,000 that had been removed when I had $23,000 excess, and moved it back into admin. It had nothing to do with the Sheriff’s Department only.”

After a few more minutes of heated discussion, the mayor stepped in, asking why the change hadn’t been made.

“My question is if that change was made known, why did it get changed?” Mayor Austin Brown asked. “If you’re saying that it’s still 55 and they said it was supposed to be less than that, why didn’t it get changed.”

He asked town clerk Shauna’ Harper why the line item was changed, and she said that “55 is what they said,” and “that’s what was moved.”

Brown said that the line item was something to look into since this was a change that was made at the last meeting.

But, after all of the discussion ended, the board did not make any motions or take any votes to change the budget despite the concerns.