Local News - January 2003

City faces busy year despite budget woes

By ALICE SMITH, LTN Staff Writer

January 3, 2003 - A new year brings new challenges for the City of Lincolnton.

The biggest challenge the city faces is continuing to provide services and complete projects despite significant budget cutbacks by the state, said City Manager Jeff Emory.

Lincolnton will lose money this year as a result of state withheld reimbursements.

Even with the implementation of the new half-penny sales tax in December, the city will still come up short.

The city will have only received the sales tax for seven months by July, when it’s time to budget again, but it lost all the state reimbursements.

“Even with the additional half-cent sales tax, we still stand to lose about $300,000 this year,” Emory said.

It’s still a help, he said, and it’s only half of what the city lost last year as a result of Gov. Mike Easley’s budgeting.

But with a loss that big, every cent is going to matter.

“That will be a challenge — finishing out the year within budget,” Emory said. “I would say the single biggest challenge for the city is the same as everyone, and that’s going to be continuing to provide the level of services we provide and completing capital projects we needed, with less money from the state and federal governments.

“Local governments are going to have to find ways to be self-supportive.”

The most immediate issue for the city is to finish debris clean-up from the ice storm in early December, Emory said, then getting back on its normal collection schedule.

Emory estimates that clean-up will be completed by mid- to late-January. City employees have already been through the city once and are now making a second trip.

Once that trip is completed, workers will concentrate on other normal pick-ups, like leaves and appliances, Emory said.

Along with the recovery efforts comes mountains of paperwork to the Federal Emergency Management Association. Lincolnton is eligible for assistance from FEMA, which will help cover costs of clean-up and employee overtime.

“That’s probably one of the most pressing challenges,” Emory said.

On the capital side, the city is working on or in the process of completing several projects this year.

He hopes the waste water treatment plant will be finished by the first half of the year.

The new Highland Drive Park project should be bid out by early Spring, Emory said.

The 25-acre park will feature two ball fields, two multi-purpose fields, a track around one field, a three-quarter mile trail and playground equipment.

In May, the city was notified that it received a $250,000 grant from the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund to use on the park.

Work on the expansion of Hollybrook Cemetery is also moving along.

 The new section in the rear of the property will allow for 1,000 more additional burial plots.

The completion date depends on when workers can get a good stand of grass at the site.

Another big project is the potential renovation and expansion of City Hall and the Lincolnton Fire Station. The city is currently in talks with architects.

The expansion has been on the minds of city officials for about 10 years, Emory said, but has been a slow-moving project.

Emory said the expansion is currently in the preliminary-design stage.

“It’s definitely going somewhere with the design, it’s hard to say as far as construction,” Emory said.

Emory said he is especially interested in having a pay classification study done for employees.

The city tries to do a study every four or five years.

Expanding the Marcia Cloninger Rail Trail is also on the city’s list of projects. Officials are currently in the process of acquiring property for the expansion.

“I would say we have even more capital projects going on (than last year),” Emory said. “We’re always busy, but there’s really a lot going on.”

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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