County commissioners (l-r) Chip Crumpler, Eric Pope, Allen McLamb and Thaddeus Godwin discuss the county’s hiring freeze during Monday night’s meeting.
Abby Cavenaugh | Sampson Independent
Work on the county’s budget for fiscal year 2025-26 has been well underway for several months, and Interim County Manager Jeffrey Hudson promises that all five county commissioners and the general public will be kept well aware of what’s proposed in the budget, as soon as he finalizes the figures by the end of this month.
“I’ve kept all five commissioners informed of our progress at every step along the way,” Hudson told The Sampson Independent. “It’s important that the manager be completely transparent with department heads and include them in the budget process. It’s important that all five commissioners know exactly what’s happening the entire way.”
Hudson will be writing the budget message for commissioners over the next few weeks, and once he has presented it to the board, it will be available for local media and the public to peruse before it’s adopted in June.
“I’m not ready yet to talk about the specific recommendations I’m giving to the board,” he said. “I can say that we’re in a very difficult time and based on the sheer amount of money used from the savings account last year, there’s no way I can use $11.8 million again to balance the budget.”
Hudson added that one of the driving factors of this coming year’s budget is last year’s budget — and the county manager at that time allotting $11,819,168 from the general fund to balance the budget. “Well, what that means is that expenditures were $11.8 million more than revenues,” he explained.
He compared a county budget to a household budget, with the general fund being sort of like a savings account. “If the money doesn’t come in and the money’s going out, it’s got to come from somewhere,” he explained. “The challenge is that I have to create a budget that brings expenditures more in line with recurring revenues.”
Part of that process included the county implementing a hiring freeze earlier this year, which ended Tuesday. Hudson stressed that no county employees lost their jobs; instead, 20 positions that were vacant were eliminated, including 18 full-time and two part-time.
“That’s a reorganization. It would be called reduction in force, by the way, if there were humans I was telling, ‘Go home. Your job’s gone now,’” Hudson said. “It’s called a reorganization if I take a vacant position and eliminate it. By attrition, we found 20 positions that are vacant or I shifted a position and eliminated it.
“Those 20 jobs are gone,” he continued. “I would require commissioner approval to add new positions to the budget. I have cut the amount of jobs necessary to achieve a balanced budget.”
Some people moved on to other jobs, some people retired, and some positions just were eliminated before they were filled.
When it comes to tax rate increases, Hudson said he could not share that information yet. However, he did say that the county commissioners have the authority to raise taxes if it would help balance the budget. “They have the authority to institute tax increases to make sure that you don’t basically… that a community doesn’t go bankrupt,” he said.
Another aspect of this budget is the possible closure of the library in Garland. “One of the things that we did, we did have to look at all of the services that are not mandated, and right now … I’m recommending that the library branches go down in the number of days from four days a week to two days a week in Newton Grove and Roseboro. Clinton will still remain the same. The Clinton library has the highest amount of patronage. The Garland library has the absolutely least amount of patronage. On average, only six to seven people use the library on the days that it’s open, yet we’re still staffing it just as we have been. So in the budget, right now I do have the Garland branch closing.”
Efforts are underway to prevent the Garland library from closing, and Hudson said he’s certainly open to any funding options, such as grants or town intervention, that could keep the branch open.
In addition, there have been rumors that recreation will cut some services. That is not the case, Hudson said. “At this point, we are not cutting any recreation programs. We are looking at fee schedules.”
That means that some fees for recreation could go up, but nothing has been finalized yet.
Hudson credited the county’s department heads with helping to balance this year’s budget. Once he received expenditure requests from the departments and county agencies that were higher than revenues, he met with each department and agency, and they worked together to figure out what could be cut from the budget.
“We went through three rounds of budget cuts,” Hudson said. “Jim Johnson, the tax administrator, and Melissa Burton, the finance officer, and I have gone over the types of revenue sources that we think we will have. I have not underestimated revenues. In the past, the revenue estimation has been very, very conservative. Instead I’ve tried to be very realistic with revenues — what you think will come in — and very realistic with expenditures.”
“This type of budgeting is more precise than what departments have done in the past,” he continued. “In the past, revenues were very, very conservatively budgeted. Expenditures were more liberally done.”
Commission Chair Allen McLamb praised the county staff for what he called “a super team effort” in getting the budget prepared. “I think we’re in good shape,” he said. “I hope that some people will recognize that what we’ve done is a positive thing.”
“I believe it’s important the commissioners go through the department budgets with the department heads, and that’s not always been the case,” Hudson said. “The commissioners, along the way, have the ability to modify or change the budget any way they desire, and then they would hold their public hearing. Their job really begins after I submit a recommended budget. Absolutely before July 1, it becomes the FY26 budget. Before that, they would adopt the budget ordinance, and that would set forth the tax rate for the county and it would set forth all of the fire tax rates. It would actually solidify things.”
The commissioners will receive Hudson’s budget message before the end of May. The June 2 meeting of the county commissioners is when Hudson will formally present the budget to the commissioners and the public. “It will be an open forum and everyone will see what we’re doing,” McLamb said. Then, there will be a public hearing to receive community members’ feedback on the proposed budget, before it is adopted by June 30.
The budget is “the most important policy that the county commissioners adopt on an annual basis,” Hudson said. “It says where they place their values, and it says where they place their money. They are able to modify that but it really becomes the spending plan. It’s not an idea. It’s saying, ‘We intend to spend this much money on these things.’ That’s why it’s so very important.”
McLamb said the commissioners have been getting reports weekly on every department’s activities. “That has been the biggest breath of fresh air,” he said.
Hudson added, “I hope that this culture of transparency will continue in the future, because I believe Sampson County needs it.”