Residents packed Turbeville Town Hall last week to get answers to their questions regarding the possible merger of the Turbeville and Clarendon County Recreation departments.
Turbeville Mayor Dwayne Howell said what was presented at a meeting held April 26 at Turbeville Town Hall before a packed audience was simply “a proposal to you from County Council about our recreation department.”
“To be honest with you, the town of Turbeville needs some help,” said Howell. “We approached (Clarendon County Administrator) David Epperson and (Clarendon County Councilman) Benton Blakely and (Council Chairman) Dwight Stewart several months ago with a proposal of merging the Turbeville department with the county’s. They discussed it with County Council, and County Council has agreed to take the program if they choose.”
Howell said upfront that “no agreement has been made with anyone on anything.”
“I used the term proposal, because that’s what it is,” Howell said. “I’ve seen several things that have been said out in the community. I heard it said we held this meeting on Wednesday night because you wouldn’t come because you would be in church. No, we set this tonight because you would come. Your children play the other days of the week. We’re not trying to hide anything.”
Howell said he’s heard rumors that the town’s “books are cooked.”
“We have to have an audit every year, just like the school district,” he said. “It has to be turned into the state. If anything is wrong with it, something has to be done. We’ve had no problems in the five years I’ve been here. If we’re cooking the books, someone would have found out about it.”
Howell said that from 2013-14, the town spent $186,000 on the recreation program.
“Some of that money that’s over the $150,000 we budgeted, that’s grants that we got or money the county gave us that we were able to put toward capital improvement,” Howell said. “A lot of times, people ask, ‘Why can’t we use that extra for something else?’ It’s earmarked where you can only do certain things with it.”
The income for the program that year, however, was just $60,591, which Howell said came from sponsorship signs, donations and athletic fees.
“We spent $26,098 of town of Turbeville money toward the recreation program that year, because we know we’re providing a service to young people when we do that.”
From 2014-15, he said the program spent $158,754, with income only at $46,403. The next year, he said the expenses were $175,852, while income was $66,472.
“My three-year figures for losses in our program are $347,830,” Howell said. “This is all in our concluded budgets that have been audited. These are the figures. This puts us at an average loss of $116,000 per year.”
“If you’re running a business, and you’re losing $116,000 annually, you’re not going to be in business that long,” Howell said.
Residents present took umbrage with the figures presented, telling Howell that money should be brought in through the canteen operated at home games.
“You have to pay four people to run the canteen, at $30 per person, and then you have supplies,” Howell answered.
He said the canteen has only made an average of $4,000 profit in any of the last three years.
“When we do our budgets, we propose the use of so much money per line item, and we try to operate within that,” he said. “The town is a business, and we have to operate within a budget. When a program is losing money like that, you have to look at other options.”
Howell also dispelled rumors that the consolidation of the recreation programs would lead to consolidation of the school districts.
“The town of Turbeville and Clarendon School District 3 are different entities,” he said. “They have one thing in common: They’re in the town of Turbeville. What your state legislators do with consolidation of schools, the town of Turbeville can’t help with that. Please wipe that out of your mind. Consolidation of the recreation program has nothing to do with consolidation of schools.”
Howell said that the proposal before residents last week also wasn’t asking for Turbeville’s or Barrineau’s children to practice solely in Manning.
“The proposal tonight is only asking Turbeville and Barrineau teams to play Manning teams, which you already do,” Howell said. “You will still practice at your home fields. You’re not going to Manning to practice.”
The biggest change, noted by Epperson, is that all-star teams would be chosen among player pools comprised of all children in Clarendon County, not just from Turbeville and Barrineau. In other words, Turbeville would no longer have its own all-star team.
“You’d have two franchises, and 24 players would be chosen from across the county,” Epperson said.
Epperson said that money would be equally distributed among the programs to keep them going.
“This means for maintenance, fuel, equipment and everything else,” he said. “It’s evenly distributed. All of the teams we sponsor will benefit from the funds in the department. No special money will go to this program over that program.”
Epperson said that someone would also be hired to run the Barrineau and Turbeville portion of the program.
“We’ve made provisions in our budget if this plan goes through,” he said.
One local resident, Nevin Coker, suggested restarting the town’s Recreation Board, which oversaw the program when he first came to the area in 1988.
“We made decisions each year for the program and how it would be run, and it did well,” he said. “We ran the program on basically a $10,000 budget.”
Former mayor Genie Hodge said, as far as she could remember, the town took over the program from the Ruritan Club due to liability issues.
“I believe they couldn’t get the insurance rates affordable enough to be able to run it themselves,” she said.
Howell said unequivocally, either way, that the town of Turbeville would not be funding the program. Asked if this meant that whoever ran the program, would the town be providing funding, he answered in the negative.
“The town cannot afford the program, is what I’m telling you,” Howell said several times throughout last week’s meeting.
Howell said residents could come up with another solution - other than a merger with the county - but gave them a deadline of June 1.
“The county has its budgeting process, and it needs to make those plans, just like we do,” Howell said.
Howell reiterated that Town Council’s stance on providing funding for the program extended to the county as well.
A handout provided during the meeting had as its last point that “Clarendon County would request that funding be paid by the Town of Turbeville to Clarendon County annually to supplement the merger.
“In our negotiations, we would make it clear to County Council that we are not in the position to provide any funding for the program,” Howell said.
VISIT THIS LINK FOR DETAILS REGARDING THE POSSIBLE MERGER
