CUMBERLAND – The Cumberland Board of Supervisors approved the payment of two invoices from Piedmont Regional Jail totaling $11,477.23 during its December meeting.

Several board members expressed frustration at the amount of spending that occurred during the December meeting, a meeting that included another unplanned appropriation of over $11,000 which was approved to complete payment of a contract originally budgeted for, but unpaid during, the previous fiscal year.

The meeting also began with a busy period of public comment, with nine speakers primarily focusing on the need for economic growth, reduction in spending and minimal taxes.

Four supervisors voted in favor of the jail appropriation, with Supervisor Lloyd Banks, District Two, opposed to the motion.

The County hopes to pay the invoices by re-appropriating funds within the current budget, according to County Administrator and Attorney Vivian Giles. If excess funds within the current budget cannot be found to cover the unplanned expenses, then a supplemental appropriation and amendment to the budget will be required, according to Giles, allowing access to funds not previously budgeted.

Giles stated that the County had received its first two “true invoices” from Piedmont Regional Jail, clarifying that in the past invoices had been sent, but the money was typically reimbursed, which had resulted in no net cost to the County. This is why she believed there had not been a need to budget money for the jail in the past.

Both invoices were dated November 30 and based on 6.74 percent, the share of prisoners from Cumberland that had been in the jail from May through October of this year, according to the invoice.

The November invoice claimed a quantity of 690 “inmate days” at a rate of $10.06. The total expense to the County for the month of November was $6,941.40.

The remaining invoice, also dated November 30, was for past due “inmate days” and was for $4,535.83.

Supervisor Parker Wheeler, District Five, sits on the Piedmont Regional Jail board of directors and provided additional information during the discussion. He explained that the jail had some “things in the works” that could potentially bring in more prisoners.

Wheeler later confirmed to the The Herald that there are two contracts the jail is pursuing that could bring in enough prisoners so that the County could return to using the jail for free as it had been in the past.

During the meeting, he concluded, “We're going to have to help them out for a couple months to get them over the hump, until they get the contract signed and done. And, probably, like they have in the past, we'll get that money back.”

Upon questioning from Supervisor Banks, Giles confirmed that the County had received reimbursements from the jail, although they have been relatively small in the recent past.

Banks went on to point out that nothing had been budgeted for the jail and expressed his frustration at the board's spending, “We're finding a pattern of new costs coming into the County that we did not plan for, that we did not budget for and no offsetting expenses.”

Wheeler interrupted Banks, reminding him that “this is our property, that we own part of this jail. We are by law having to do this. We can, we can be forced to do this. We can do it and we can get on with it and they can get other bills paid and we can hope to get our money back.”

Banks acknowledged that the expense was an unforeseen responsibility to the jail and said the board had two options, “we can spend money we don't have or we can reduce expenses elsewhere…Are we willing to reduce expenses elsewhere to offset these unexpected costs?”

He went on to point out that the County's reserve fund was considerably less than the amount of debt owed by the County.

When asked by Chairman David Meinhard, District Four, if the board could expect to receive another invoice next month, Wheeler replied, “We may. We may have to help them for a month or two more…”

Wheeler moved to appropriate funds for the two Piedmont Regional Jail invoices, adding, upon clarification from Giles, for the amount of $11,477.23.

Before the vote, Supervisor Kevin Ingle, District Three, stated that he agreed with Banks, “We're going to have to try to look into the unspent budget… We still need to take care of this immediately, since we are tied into it…We do have to live up to our obligations.”

After the vote, Meinhard challenged the other supervisors to “consider the prospect of a special meeting just to go back through our budget and see what we might be able to find to cut out…to cover these instances.”

Upon a suggestion by Ingle that such a review could occur during the regularly scheduled January meeting, Meinhard agreed, adding that supervisors would have a month to look over the budget individually before the meeting.

While discussing the source of the funds for the jail, Meinhard later told The Herald:

“We have been put into a very difficult situation with what has gone on with Piedmont Regional Jail. And I'm not sure how we are going to find a solution to that, but we're going to have to find something and without spending money we don't have.

“You know, we got put into that situation where we're being pushed with things that are coming up that we had no reason to expect last year when we were budgeting funds.

“In fact, we had been led to believe that, 'Oh, the jail is one of those things that's going to be taken care of' because it had been. And then, as things happened, that backfired, and I think that backfire has caught Buckingham and Prince Edward and a whole lot of other people.

“But then we've got to remember that Cumberland is not in as…good a position as some of those other localities because they don't have the debt burdened that the previous boards have put us into…Almost half of every tax dollar that Cumberland County collects goes to pay on the debt and that is a ridiculously high debt burden for a poor county like Cumberland to have.”

Giles later stated to The Herald that staff would go through the current budget to find funds that could be re-appropriated to cover the jail invoices and submit them to the board for their approval. She felt it was likely the needed funds could be found within the current budget.

If the amount cannot be found, the budget will need to be amended and a request for a supplemental appropriation approved by the board, according to Giles, which would access funds beyond the current amount budgeted for the fiscal year. If the supplemental appropriation is large enough, a public hearing would also be required.