Motorcoach saga rolls on at Hamlet City Council budget session

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been updated post-print publication.

HAMLET — Logistical concerns for Hamlet Senior Center motorcoach travel trips were once again at the forefront of the Hamlet City Council’s most recent budget work session.

In its previous meeting, the City Council made the decision to return motorcoach travel trips to the senior center, as they had been relegated to Richmond County Aging Services, over concerns with free trip compensation vouchers and potential conflicts of interest with city employees. That decision left senior center director Sarah Locklear and employees scrambling to hammer out the details for an upcoming trip.

At the behest of City Manager, Matt Christian, Locklear appeared before the council last week to clarify newly refined motorcoach trip policies and guidelines, while also expressing concerns for the expedited planning necessary to successfully undertake such a significant trip.

According to Locklear, senior center members and Richmond County residents will be traveling to Niagara Falls and Toronto from June 4-10 via Diamond Tours. The trip currently has 80 participants, rendering four comped vouchers from the tour company for group leaders from the senior center.

Christian explained that group leaders would be approved on a case by case basis by the city manager himself.

“The purpose for that is, if we are hosting trips through the senior center and we’ve got volunteers that are acting on behalf of the city and representing the city, out with the participants or in the public, I think its important that we have some oversight over who that is, if they are not employees. If they are employees then we have clear oversight over who those people are and how to manage them, but if they are just volunteers, I think we just need a little check and balance there and moving forward,” he said.

On short notice, Locklear was able to rally only two group leaders to oversee the trip. Diamond Tours requires two group leaders for each bus, carrying 40 participants each. Additionally, the two prescribed group leaders had never served in a leadership position on a senior center trip, leaving the city manager and city council vexed and in search of solutions.

According to Locklear, group leaders are responsible for the safety, coordination, and management of the group, and charged with being a good ambassador to the Hamlet Senior Center and more importantly the City of Hamlet. Locklear declared that she trusted the chosen leaders and had provided requisite instruction of duties, but that they were not completely comfortable conducting the requirements without Locklear or another experienced leader present.

Council Member Maurice Stuart II decried a concern that pervaded the entire council; he was not willing to allow group leaders to oversee a trip if they weren’t absolutely sure they could perform adequately.

Locklear, regarding the chosen leaders, said, “I began prepping to go on the trip based on their concerns, I would like to train both of them on the job so they would have experience how to handle a trip.”

A heated discussion between Christian and Locklear about the centers preparedness and ability to successfully complete the upcoming trip followed. “Me being prepared or my lack of preparedness has fallen on me in the last two weeks, to prepare my staff for this trip, and to me I’m being set up to fail. As Matt stated in one of our meetings, this trip is going to be a failure and nothing I have ever done for the city of Hamlet at the Hamlet Senior Center has ever been a failure,” Locklear declared.

In a later email, Christian reiterated that he denied having told Sarah that the upcoming trip would be a failure.

After significant discourse, the council decided that Locklear and her husband Jeff, who has experience on senior center trips, would absorb group leader positions along with the other two less experienced group leaders. Additionally, the council determined that an individual could be hired on a periodic ad hoc basis to ensure that the senior center remains open if Sarah and her employees go on the Niagara trip.

Staffing decisions for the upcoming trip did not completely ameliorate the council’s concerns, however. Council member Abbie Covington expressed her frustration footing the bill for trips in which not all travelers are citizens of Hamlet.

Whether it be the $23 per diem allocated to city employees serving as group leaders or potentially having to pay a salary to keep the senior center open during trips, Covington illustrated the need for some sort of compensation from the county. “It ends up sucking resources out of our budget, and I’m happy to send 200 people, I don’t care, you know I don’t care, there has to be some sort of compensation for us picking up the note for somebody else,” she said.

Covington suggested opening up an avenue of conversation with the county.

“I feel like we cannot just continue to dole out Hamlet tax revenue,” she reiterated.

Christian, Locklear, and the council decided to press on with the next trip. Council member Eddie Martin said, “I think right now we just focus on the upcoming trip, it’s in June, we just need to help it along.”

While motorcoach trips have been returned to the Hamlet Senior Center, subsequent meetings will certainly require more conversation to rectify issues and canonize policy.

Hamlet police receive body armor

Hamlet Chief of Police, Dennis Brown, presented the council with his intention to provide city police officers with new body armor. The new front and back ceramic ballistic plates will increase officer survivability in the event they engage a suspect with a high powered rifle.

Unfortunately, according to Brown, even a small city like Hamlet has reason to be concerned. “When you go into our evidence room…we have a wall of guns that we have seized in the last ten years. It’s unbelievable, the amount of weapons we are puling off the streets, and those weapons that felons have, weapons that are stolen. They’re carried outside of what’s acceptable range. Two weeks ago they pulled an AK 47 off a guy, they modified it so it was really a short pistol, and had a thirty round clip in it, so unfortunately that’s the world we live in today.”

Additionally, Chief Brown showed the council three different plate carrier options. Based on recommendations from Chief Brown and his officers, the council overwhelmingly agreed to purchase the most functional and comfortable plate carrier, manufactured by Point Blank Enterprises. The carrier incorporates gel pads at friction points and a molle webbing system for attaching other gear.

“I think that what’s most important is the safety of our officers, and I want all our officers to have the best equipment we can provide,” Martin said. “I don’t even want to talk about other vests, the last vest that he [Brown] showed is in my opinion the one that we ought to go buy.”

Water meters malfunction

According to Christian, Hamlet has around a million dollars in ARPA funds at their disposal. The American Rescue Plan Act, signed in to law in March of 2021, provided money for state and local governments in an attempt to offset financial hardship resulting from COVID-19.

Christian illustrated to the council, a program to mitigate revenue loss from the city by treating public water but failing to adequately monitor and subsequently tax residential and commercial use. “If you assume that we have at least 75% of meters reading at least 6% under reading, then there is a mathematical benefit to that, a financial benefit in our investment to reading those meters properly,” Christian explained.

His proposal — a pilot program, installing a technologically advanced electronic network system of monitoring water meters and city usage. According to Christian, revamping the city’s entire water infrastructure would cost $2 million, significantly exceeding the available ARPA funds.

“I wanted to propose an alternative to eating the whole elephant at once,” Christian said.

“Starting with a pilot project of maybe 500 meters, that would get the network infrastructure in place, it would allow us to replace our oldest meters and actually build a proof of concept. Starting with 500 meters, just some rough budget numbers, we are looking at $245,000 as a budget,” Christian stated.

Council member Covington supported the pilot program but raised some concerns about sample size. “We are talking about a project that encompasses 3,763 meters. 500 meters, I don’t think it’s going to give you reliable data, if I was going to do a pilot project, I wouldn’t do less than 1,000 meters,” she said.

The council generally agreed to tackle the water meter issue, save for council member Jesse McQueen.

“I would like for us to at least go back and look over the past three years of budgets at some of the things that we needed in the city desperately, like fire issues, police issues and things like that and see if there is anything that we need to spend money on rather than taking the million that we have and basically for all intents and purposes going in to debt another million,” he said.

The council ultimately passed a motion, with only McQueen in opposition, to bring in a contractor to develop plans to initiate Christian’s water meter pilot program.

Additionally, City Manger Christian outlined several policy updates and new budget provisions.

• Update probationary employment language

• Rectify issues with compensatory time

• Adjust employee travel policy by paying per diem up front

• Adjust bereavement leave from two to three days

• Draft a form for reasonable suspicion of employee drug use

• Determine a policy for transfer of sick days from neighboring municipal employers

• Adjust police salary for highest ranking officers commensurate with market value

• Update employee insurance policy so as to alleviate financial pressure on employees

• Add Christmas bonus to budget

Budget changes and additions will have a $102,250 impact on the most recent available budget.