After a break from meetings in the month of July, the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners on Aug. 7 discussed the 2024 fiscal year budget, made some appointments and presented a national achievement award.

The board voted unanimously on June 7 to approve the budget. This year, the board presented the budget in a new video format.

“I think it’s a great way to communicate with our citizens about what’s happening with their tax dollars,” said Commissioner Jimmy Keefe.

The video is available on social media and on the county website. For information, go to cumberlandcountync.gov/budget The video explains how the budget is split up and what projects will be funded. This year’s budget totals a bit over $381 million, an increase of about 4% over last year’s budget.

The largest expenditure category is human services, taking up 31% of the budget. This includes staff for the public health, veteran services, social services and child support departments. The second largest category is education, at 27%, followed by public safety, 19%; general government, 18%; cultural and recreation, 3%; and economic and fiscal development, 1%.

The goals of laid out in the budget plan include renovations to the Crown Center; improvements in the Gray’s Creek water and sewer district to address pollution; the design and construction of a homeless support center; expanding capacity of the Ann Street Landfill; and a plan to increase county staff retention.

For public schools, $87.5 million has been designated, an increase of $3.2 million over last year. Additional money is appropriated to hire more school nurses, crossing guards, and resource officers.
Fayetteville Technical Community College is getting $15.5 million in funding this year as well.

Technology award

A national award won by Cumberland County earlier this summer was presented during the Aug. 7 meeting.
The National Association of Counties and the Center for Digital Government awarded Cumberland seventh place in the 250,000-499,990 population category in the Digital Counties Survey last month.

The award highlights the use of digital tools to streamline government services “and apply innovative and emerging technologies to county priorities,” according to the citation. The award was presented to the information technology department.

Cumberland County also received the award in 2016, 2017 and 2019.

Board appointments

The board approved four appointments to county boards:

• Harold Bachman to the Alcoholic Beverage Control board.
• Charlotte Davis and Jeffery Brooks to the Cumberland County Animal Services board.
• Michelle Williams to the Fayetteville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau board of directors.

The meeting then went into a closed session.