First steps to county budget

See additional budget story Saturday

Construction paper, markers, scotch tape and vision boards of goals for the county budget were the theme of a special workshop held by The Sampson County Board of Commissioners and county administration staff Monday afternoon.

Interim County manager Jeffrey Hudson guided the special workshop session as he introduced a new way of thinking for the commissioners to consider as they outline what is most advantageous to the needs of Sampson County as they head to a completed budget in June of this year.

“There will be a lot of heavy lifting tonight.” Hudson said, metaphorically speaking, referring to the thoughts of the commissioners on what is needed for the residents of Sampson County as a whole, and not just each individual district.

Before the night’s main event, which stretched to 8 p.m., Hudson first provided an overview of the difference between adopted county tax rates and actual effective tax rates.

Hudson told the board the only difference is one is voted on and set by the commissioners while the other is the actual value which is less than the rate – its effectiveness – based on how old the county rate is and what the buying power is now compared to a tax rate set years ago that has since been affected by inaccurate property value assessments and the rising costs of services paid for by property taxes.

Hudson presented a brief overview of comparison counties in both tax rates and population, stressing how their tax rates either did or did not match their effective tax rate, stating how some counties had more businesses than others and could lean on sales tax to alleviate property taxes. He made the comparison to people, showing a photo of hundreds of people, stating, “Like every person,” said Hudson, “every county is different, similar but different.” He mentioned average income, net migration, loss of population, and types of business available in some counties as he talked.

“A budget will be presented on or about June 1,” Hudson said to the board, noting that tonight’s work was some of the first steps to take in deciding what departments get certain funding by prioritizing certain needs over others.

Hudson said it may seem like an insurmountable task to think about setting a budget, broken down not only by department but various entities within a department, but 100 counties across the state are having to do the same thing.

“You eat an elephant one bite at a time, so grab your forks and let’s get to eating,” Hudson said to the commissioners.

“Tonight is the high level, the 30,000 foot view; it’ll give us direction” noted Hudson. “Tonight’s work will pay off.”

The work of the night Hudson was referring to was individual tables with sentences written out on stripes of construction-type paper that represent potential goals for each department. There were also blank strips of paper commissioners could use to write their own goals, ones they particularly wanted to see accomplished in Sampson County.

The instructions were as follows:

• Read the sentence strip ideas on the table

• Commissioners could write new sentences strips, if needed.

• By consensus of all five commissioners, a sentence strip gets moved to the wall.

• When a sentence strip is moved to the wall it now becomes a possible goal.

• Not every sentence strip must be used.

• Read the wall for final consensus, out of all that make it to the wall, only two or three that received the most votes would be the priority goals of each department.

For example only, Hudson explained for clarification, “Renovating the courthouse might be an idea you have, and if everyone is OK with it, then you paste it to the wall (to be considered) and that moves it from an idea to a goal.”

The first workshop area they did was growth and infrastructure which included public works.

Other sections with paper strips to pin on the wall, were:

Public education – This included Sampson County Schools, Clinton City Schools, Sampson Community College and the public library system.

Safe community – Detention, Sheriff’s Department, fire services, Emergency Medical Services, emergency services and 911 communications.

Healthy community – Animal shelter, Department of Social Services, recreation, Veterans Services, Department of Aging and the Health Department.

Relations and connections – Sampson County Agri-Exposition Center.

Economic Development – Cooperative Extension, Economic Development, Soil and Water Conservation, Planning and Development.

Excellent government – This included, finance, human resources, administration, taxes, information technology, Board of Elections and Register of Deeds.

Once goals were placed on the wall for each section, the commissioners were instructed to pick only a certain number of goals on the wall as priorities by placing a sticky dot on the sentence strip; this ranged from one to four goals depending on how many were chosen to be taped to the wall.

Of the eight goals on the wall for growth and infrastructure, the top three ideas were:

• Connect areas experiencing PFAS contamination to the county’s water system.

• Establish a larger road network to include four-lane connector roads linking Sampson with larger urbanized areas and the interstates to take drivers there.

• Contingency plan for all public buildings.

Of the four goals placed on the wall for public education, the top two ideas were:

• Establish a funding formula for public K12 education that creates budget certainty and strengthens relationships between the school systems and county government.

• Develop and maintain a 10-year facility needs assessment to guide future maintenance of public facilities and accommodate future student populations.

The five goals placed on the wall for safe community led to a tie between four goals, the only section of the night to have a four-way tie, which had to be narrowed down to three. The top four ideas for safe community were:

• Create a multi-point emergency communications broadcast tower system for communications redundancy.

• Provide sufficient funding for the the Sheriff’s Department, and Detention Center, to recruit and retain highly qualified law enforcement officers to provide a safer community.

• Over the next five years, improve emergency medical response times to less than 10 minutes.

• Establish funding for the county’s fire departments sufficient enough to maintain the individual missions of each fire department, and make the process of establishing fire tax rates more efficient.

Of the three goals that made it to the wall for a healthy community, the top idea was:

• Sufficient staffing and funding for Veterans Services.

Five goals that made it to the wall under relations and connections, two goals garnered the most votes, which were:

• Create an environment where residents feel respected and engaged in county government decisions.

• Designate a county commissioner liaison to the two boards of education, the community college, the business community and the ag community.

Of the five goals placed on the wall under economic development, the two most voted on goals were:

• Optimize the balance between industrial, commercial and residential development to maximize the tax base and minimize the tax rate.

• Re-establish the Transportation Advisory Committee.

And last, but not least, for the excellent government section, of the eight goals placed on the wall, the top three goals chosen were:

• Ensure the security and safety of government I.T. systems to protect the county workforce, citizens, personal information and public data from cyber attacks.

• Explore methods to enhance grant awards to Sampson County through either in-house or contracted services.

• Maintain the county government’s positive financial position, low tax rate, and credit strength.

After the commissioners made their selections, they gathered in a semi-circle to close out the session, with several making comments about the workshop’s progress.

First, Hudson commented on the efficiency of the process. “Now you see how this helps. Had this not been written out this way, you might have only remembered (as the previous example) the courthouse needed remodeling and forgot about other critical ideas.”

Commissioner Chip Crumpler III thought teamwork made the difference. “We worked well together,” he noted. “It’s obvious that this group of commissioners has the best interest for Sampson County in mind.”

Commissioner Eric Pope lauded the idea and thought other counties, and municipalities, should do the same thing to help kick-start each budget season, looking forward to doing it again next year if needed.

Commissioner Lethia Lee expressed how impressed she was with the exercise, stating, “We took our time, we thought this through, and it shows.”

Commissioner Thadeous Godwin was pleased with the results as well and said he felt it really made a difference.