City residents sound off on budget
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on May 22, 2018 5:50 AM
Most of the conversation centered around changes to funding for several non-profit organizations in the city. The proposed budget would provide $5,000 each to Rebuilding Broken Places, the HGDC Community Crisis Center and the Boys and Girls Club of Wayne County, while cutting the same amount from the Wayne County Library, the Arts Council of Wayne County, and Waynesborough Park.
Mary Ann Dudley, director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Johnston and Wayne County, spoke first. She thanked the board for considering the Boys and Girls club for funding.
"I can only say thank you for the potential inclusion in this year's budget, and number two for any and everything you do to help us," she said. "Sometimes we just need any kind of service, and you guys are always at our door helping us out."
Not everyone was as excited about the budget funding changes.
Executive director of the Wayne County Museum Jennifer Kuykendall said that the cut is coming at a particularly important time in the museum's growth.
"It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but for us out budget is so very small that $5,000 is fully one-third of the funding budget we get from the city," she said. "This cut could have a huge, negative impact on our ability to maintain the progress and really exciting momentum that we've seen at the museum over the last six months."
Kuykendall said that the museum has worked to reinvent itself through exhibits which are more relevant to the community it serves, and has done good work collaborating with Wayne County Public Schools to bring more young people into the facility than ever before.
The museum has seen an increase in visitors of 200 percent over the last two years combined, Kuykendall said, leading to fundraising efforts to build a new parking lot.
A $5,000 budget cut would put that plan among others at risk, she said.
Arts Council director Wendy Snow Walker said that the cut to her organization would not be immediately debilitating, but would quickly become a problem if it happened again. She said that the arts are a unifying force that has made downtown Goldsboro a better place.
"The vibrant arts culture that we have creating is truly helping to change the energy downtown," she said.
Walker asked the council to not only consider reversing the cut, but to look at increasing the Arts Council's budget in next year's budget.
The organizations receiving funding all have something in common -- they deal directly with aiding people in poverty. Speaker Ravonda Jacobs said that organizations like the museum and Arts Council, while valuable, need to be willing to give up some funding in order to benefit groups focused on dealing with poverty.
"The Boys and Girls Club, Rebuilding Broken Places and the Community Crisis Center had no money, none. And nobody even thought about giving them any money until Councilman [Bevan] Foster and Councilman [Antonio] Williams brought them up," she said. "When you look at those three places, they help some of the lowest levels of our city. And they got no funding."
If the city is to have a genuine focus on unity, Jacobs said, then it will be necessary for some organizations to make sacrifices in order to help bolster others.
Gerren Taylor followed Jacobs. He said that the city's funding allocations do not match up to the values and goals stated in its recommended budget, including a "safe and secure community," and "exceptional quality of life."
"In further reading in the budget, I did see that there was no funding for Rebuilding Broken Place, and I'm just going to use them as an example because of the types of things they do as far as financial literacy, the senior home they have right there and the after school programs," he said. "I don't see how you wouldn't want to fund something like that, or that there would be no funding for an organization like that."
Brownie Doss, with WAGES, then thanked the council for its support of the Meals on Wheels program.
"We appreciate your support, we appreciate the wonderful volunteers Mr. [Gene] Aycock and Mr. [Bill] Broadaway were here last week volunteering and delivering meals," she said. "On behalf of our seniors at WAGES we thank you so much for supporting us."
Mark Colebrook, founder of Operation Unite Goldsboro, spoke last. He came to the meeting to speak on behalf of the teachers of Wayne County, he said, in advocating for a council-funded increase in teacher supplements in city schools.
"For years the city council, not this city council but other city councils, have said that they couldn't do anything, couldn't put any money toward schools, couldn't put any supplements," he said. "Well, that was incorrect, so what I'm here to request is that whatever the county commissioners are putting toward supplements for the teachers, I'm here to request that you guys put in your budget to match."
Commissioners are expected to use part of a proposed 3 percent property tax increase to raise supplements by 0.5 percent next year.
The council will further discuss the budget at a work session at 9 a.m. today.