This afternoon — Thursday — at 5:00, the Vance County Board of Commissioners met for a budget session and adopted the 2016-2017 fiscal year budget. The budget will go into effect on July 1, and it passed by a vote of 5-0, with Archie Taylor abstaining and Leo Kelly absent. Commissioner Deborah Brown, who made the motion, and Dan Brummitt, who seconded Brown’s motion, voted yes as did Tommy Hester, Terry Garrison and Chairman Gordon Wilder.
Brown’s motion was contingent on the budget including an additional, one-time $150,000 going to the Granville-Vance District Health Department, which is drastically underfunded at this time. The $150,000 is in addition to the $50,000 that was already in the proposed budget.
Taylor said he was not in favor of doing the $150,000 at this time because the Health Department may get a grant in August. Taylor said, “I am in favor of giving the money down the line if it’s needed. I am not in favor of fronting this money, but we can review and give it in September if we need to.”
Garrison’s comment was difficult to hear in the meeting space word for word, but his statement seemed to indicate his understanding was the Health Department needed the money now regardless of the grant.
A variety of factors has the Health Department underfunded right now because of things like changes in state funding, additional requirements and demand for services. Based on what was said in the meeting, even with the efforts of Vance County and additional efforts by Granville County leaders, the Health Department is spending into its fund balance at this time.
More than one commissioner said it was time to sit down with Granville County leaders and with Health Department leaders and get recommendations going forward and that the sit down needed to be soon.
The only other specific budget item mentioned in the session was about “Citizens Aligned To Take Back Henderson, NC’s” effort to tear down and remove dilapidated and abandoned houses jointly owned by the City and County. The board did not increase the $25,000 amount in the proposed budget to the $83,000 which the advocacy group had requested at Monday night’s regularly scheduled commissioner meeting.
Chairman Wilder and other members of the board did say they were committed to the clean up effort and that monies could be appropriated after the initial $25,000 was used up.
Prior to the meeting, Wilder told WIZS News he had hoped the budget would be adopted at the session. He specifically mentioned the Health Department funding as something that needed to be worked out. He said, “That’s something that has been pretty much out of the public’s eye. A pretty good chunk of money there that they were requesting and there were some issues that have come to light even as late as today.”
In regard to the Health Department, he said, “We are planning to do the right thing, but how much and when and that sort of thing is still up for some debate.”
In Wilder’s remarks to WIZS News this afternoon before the meeting, he said of the “Citizens Aligned” project, “We are all committed to completing that project, and one of the things I’d like to see us do is have a time line attached to it. You know, first of the year or whatever the board decides, that we have the goal that we are committed to to get all our properties taken care of anyway.”
It seems that the plan right now is that Vance County is budgeting $25,000 to remove the jointly owned houses, and all indications are the City has $25,000 towards the cause as well.
Wilder said, “Now we know, without a doubt, that it’s going to take more than that, but we don’t know how much more. We are waiting for some estimates, and we are going to ask the (County) staff to get us some estimates or some quotes rather, and we will come back and try to do the right thing there.”
When the initial money gives out, the County, and the City for that matter, can vote to give some more. Wilder said, “We have some money in contingency, and we can also vote to take it out of fund balance. Just because we don’t put it in the budget, doesn’t mean we are not going to do it.”
As to Vance County’s fund balance, Wilder said, “We are trying to keep and maintain and build our fund balance. It’s not a bad fund balance, but at the same time it’s not dangerously low or foolishly high. But we don’t have the fund balance of a Granville County or somebody like that.”