Forms for Richmond County Department heads to begin the process of budgeting have been distributed, County Manager Jim Haynes told commissioners at their meeting Monday night.

Haynes said department heads were instructed to not submit new budgets for fiscal year 2009 to 2010 any greater than the ones they operated on this year.

“It is going to be a major job to control the budget,” he said.

He said he was still unsure what monies the state — with its budget problems — will withhold from counties.

With Gov. Beverly Perdue seeking lottery money for the general budget of the state and formulas for funding being changed, Haynes said the county could lose some revenue.

Chairman Kenneth Robinette said commissioners will have a retreat sometime in May to discuss the proposed budget.

Sales tax

At risk also is some $750,000 in sales tax revenue. Haynes said sales tax will now be distributed according to “point of sales” rather than per capita.

Commissioner John Garner said it can’t be emphasized enough that buying in Richmond County means supporting the county.

No longer will the county benefit from sales taxes being redistributed from larger metropolitan areas to rural areas around the state.

Robinette said factors favoring the county included a good fund balance and its conservative approach in budgeting.

Haynes said so far tax collections are ahead of the same period last year. Tax collections each year in the budget are based on the percentage collected.

This will be Haynes’ last budget since he is retiring in July.

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The $500,000 grant from N.C. Rural Development has been approved, Haynes said. That gives the county $1.6 million in grants for the new Fox Road area water lines.

He said the state has not yet approved the project.

Lisa England of Clean Water For Life Richmond County appeared Monday night and said progress in Montgomery County with its water lines to the contaminated wells area, “makes our commissioners look bad.” She said she, “was not trying to be ugly or anything” in saying so.

Robinette responded to her charge saying the county was doing all it could, and he was “not going to let you ridicule commissioners.” England then backed away from her comments but continued to question county testing.

England said the residents of her area were confused and scared by test results. Commissioner Thad Ussery said he was confused about her concerns when she wanted the county to do more testing of wells, but at the same time was telling residents to ignore test results.

When some residents had wells re-tested which came back negative for contamination, she said she told them to still not use the water.

When her re-tested well came back with even stronger contamination and her neighbor’s showed improvement, she said it didn’t sound right.

Robinette said the county results are those issued from state professionals and that no two wells are the same, as explained in previous meetings with those professionals.

He said some 370 tests have been made with some being re-tested as many as four times since contamination was discovered.

Meet again?

Ussery, chairman of the Richmond County Board of Health, said that department would be glad to have another meeting with residents if they chose to hear explainations again about the testing.

“But if you don’t believe the testing, why then do you want more testing?” he asked.

“We are really scared,” England said. “We don’t know which way to go.”

Ussery said he would be highly concerned also if placed in her situation.

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Other items on the Monday night agenda included:

n Commissioners approved Mourning Dove Lane as the name of a new road off U.S. 1 west of the Hospice complex.

n Commissioners approved a $219,287 state grant request for the 2010 Community Transportation Program administered by the Richmond Interagency Transportation.

n Commissioners approved RBC Centura as the low bid on a loan for software for the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office.

n Commissioners approved renewal of a contract for fire protection services in designated areas outside the city limits of Hamlet.

n Commissioners approved an application to the state for $82,994 for the Criminal Justice Partnership Program for Richmond County for fiscal year 2009 to 2010. Commissioners will prepare a proclamation in support of the program to present to the governor’s office. The county’s share is to provide office space for the program.

n There were 1.4 tons of litter picked up in Richmond County in February with county employees picking up 16 miles of roadways filling 84 bags with trash and picking up nine tires.

n Commissioners agreed to let the health department accept payment for services with credit and debit cards.

n Rick Sago, county economic developer, said SRB Holdings will begin hiring in April through the N.C. Employment Security Commission. Jobs will include forklift operators for the distribution operation as well as warehouse inventory of office help.

He said grading was being done for the new units to be installed at the Progress Energy electric generating facility south of Hamlet.

He said a Web site, wwwbuildbragg.com, was established for contractors and subcontractors on the new headquarters facilities at Fort Bragg.

He said a Web site, www.ncrecovery.gov, was established to keep track of federal stimulus money coming into North Carolina.

n Contact reporter Tom MacCallum at 997-3111, ext. 15; e-mail tmaccallum@yourdailyjournal.com.