Police get boost in Spring Hope’s $2.77M budget

SPRING HOPE — Two cents of town residents’ property tax rate will help the Spring Hope Police Department add an eighth officer to its ranks.

Commissioners voted unanimously on Monday to adopt a $2,770,010 budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year. The spending plan maintains Spring Hope’s current tax rate of 67 cents per $100 in assessed value. Town Manager Andrew DeIonno said increased property values in Nash County’s eight-year revaluation allowed the board to consider a revenue-neutral rate of 65 cents.

“The difference is approximately $26,000, I believe, between the two,” DeIonno said. “That difference would be spent entirely on the Spring Hope PD to hire an eighth officer.”

With Police Chief Nate Gant and Lt. Jason Leary focused primarily on administrative duties, the police department’s current roster of seven sworn law enforcement officers leaves a five-person rotation to cover patrol shifts.

Spring Hope’s $2.77 million spending plan allocates $668,330 to public safety, $498,965 to administration, $178,647 to sanitation and $153,818 to building maintenance. The town has a $950,000 enterprise fund for its water and sewer systems.

The Board of Commissioners also gave police recruiting and retention a shot in the arm Monday, unanimously approving a career development policy that will allow Gant to pay his officers more for experience and in-service training.

The policy adds the officer first class, senior police officer and master police officer ranks to the SHPD. Receiving a promotion to officer first class would require at least two years of service and 120 training hours, along with successful completion of radar, field sobriety testing and officer survival classes.

“It also allows us to be able to try to recruit experienced officers,” Gant said. “If you have a seven- or eight-year veteran officer at another agency who’s looking to go to a smaller department, then he can come in and say ‘Well, this is what I’ve got to offer. This is my years of service, this is my certifications.’ Then he can come in at his pay plus the additional percentages on top of that, which is pretty much what everybody in North Carolina does — we’re just a little bit behind the ball on that.”

The Spring Hope Police Department responded to 121 calls for service in May, including 50 traffic stops, 16 disturbance/fight calls, nine traffic crashes and five domestic disturbance complaints. Gant said officers initiated 13 investigations and cleared 10 cases last month.

Mayor Kyle Pritchard credited Gant with finding ways to keep good officers on the force even when Spring Hope’s police pay lagged behind other towns.

“You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into it. You’ve obviously done a great job with leadership and keeping officers here when they pay wasn’t what it should have been,” Pritchard told the chief. “Every officer I’ve talked to attests to that, so congratulations on excellent leadership. You’re obviously keeping these people around, and I think you’ve really put together a good classification and pay structure for your police department.”

Commissioners also adopted a classification and compensation system for town employees in other departments and signed off on a new personnel policy.

“We have not had an updated classification system since 1999, I believe,” DeIonno said. “… This will go a long way toward addressing some of the issues we’ve had with compensation.”

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