The 10th item on tonight’s Laurinburg City Council agenda is “a discussion on the proposed new City Hall and police Station.”

Two weeks ago, City Council had the Public Input session on plans for a $10 million new City Hall and police station. Approximately 100 citizens attended and 14 citizens spoke. Of those 14, 12 were opposed, one in favor, and one was difficult to say what he was for. Among those opposed were several former elected officials, several businessmen, a former teacher, a civil servant, several veterans, a pastor and others. The one who spoke in favor was a physician.

The citizens asked council many questions. They asked that if more space is needed, for computer servers and file storage, as council claims, could the large council chambers be easily converted to storage space and City Council instead use the AB Gibson meeting room for council meetings, like the county commissioners have for years.

Councilman Curtis Leak gave the only response; ‘Council wants their own chambers.’ Citizens asked if rather than just relying on architects that specialize in new buildings, efficiency experts could be hired to present to citizens and council less expensive options, including renovation, in a truly unbiased fashion. Council member JD Willis said council doesn’t want to do that. Mr. Willis did not provide a reason why not. A citizen asked if a referendum could be voted on by the citizens. Council offered no response. The physician who was in favor of building a new building said the current building is old and a new building would be better.

I believe it was very clear to anyone attending that meeting, including myself, council has already made up their minds. They will vote tonight to move forward with building a new City Hall. I am as certain of that as I am certain that it made absolutely no difference to any member of council what any citizen said at that meeting. It was a charade and a waste of citizens’ time.

It is unfortunate that our local elected public officials really do not seem to care what the citizens want. I hear local elected officials say all the time they don’t understand why citizens don’t get more involved. But tonight, when City Council votes to move forward with building a new City Hall despite almost unanimous opposition at the Public Input Session, despite citizen’s literally begging council to listen, we will see why citizens don’t get involved. Because, as everybody in town always says, ‘they’re going to do what they want, what’s the point.’

The idea of a new City Hall and police station has been tossed around for over 30 years. Council says that now the time is right because they have the money to do it. Yes, council has the money. They have your money.

Council has the money only because last year, when their secret plans were hatched, they began to systematically take the citizen’s money each month by suddenly raising the water bill an outrageous 35 percent overnight. Yes, council has the money because last year they began systematically taking the citizen’s money each month by not lowering the electric rate as fast or as much as they should have. So now that they have stockpiled your money, they have the money for their City Hall. It is as simple as that.

When council votes to proceed with a new City Hall tonight, citizens should not lose all hope of being heard. Last week’s Scotland School Board elections showed that the citizens can have the final say when elected officials conspire to spend millions of dollars without the citizen consent, like the current school board is planning to do.

The four challengers scored a decisive victory over the four school board incumbents, outpolling them 22,416 (55 percent) to 18,295 (45 percent) in total votes. Two challengers had the highest vote totals and a third challenger is just 52 votes from unseating a third incumbent (and may still when the provisional votes are counted). Historically, in local elections nationwide, incumbents win re-election over 80 percent of the time. So, I believe, last week’s local school board election results, where the challengers outpolled the incumbents by a wide margin and won 50 percent (perhaps 75 percent) of the seats, is the result when elected officials do not listen.

In conclusion, it is my opinion, that a $10 million new City Hall, a $35 million dollar new elementary school and a $3 million recreation/community center are all elected officials ‘wants’ rather than citizen ‘needs’. I believe, when spending millions of dollars of citizen’s money on ‘wants’ rather than ‘needs’, the citizens should be allowed to have a say, in a referendum, on how their money is spent.

I encourage all my fellow local elected officials to put their ‘wants’ to the people as soon as possible, which would be in a county-wide referendum in 2018. Otherwise, there will almost surely be even more current elected officials on the losing end in the near future.

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Matthew Block

Mayor’s column

 

Matthew Block serves as mayor of Laurinburg. He writes a bi-weekly column on the city and municipal issues.