Simon
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BENNETTSVILLE —On Monday, the Bennettsville City Council held a second budget meeting.
At the meeting, Bennettsville City Administrator William Simon Jr. announced that the final accounting of the American Rescue Plan Act funds has been completed.
“We’ve done a lot of work with ARPA accounting over the last few weeks and months. It’s unfortunate that the scenario we found ourselves in has been mischaracterized by citizens, by news outlets, and others. We all sitting around this table know the challenges that we’ve had in this city for years. That many people were not doing their jobs, which means we’ve had some challenges dealing with our financial practices. We’re not alone with that, it happens all over the state quite honestly,” he said during the meeting.
Simon said the details of the accounting will be shared at a public forum, which will be in the next week or so. “We encourage all members of our community to attend as we discuss how these funds have been allocated and managed to benefit our community. The city of Bennettsville is committed to transparency and accountability. This report is a testament to both principles.”
At the upcoming forum, Simon said the city will provide comprehensive insight and address questions. The city will provide a spreadsheet at the meeting which will show every project that has been funded by ARPA funds.
Simon cautioned the public about getting city information from unofficial sources.
“Please be cautious of unofficial narratives or reports, especially from news outlets relying on anonymous sources,” he said.
In an interview with the Herald-Advocate on Thursday, Simon addressed reports from a North Carolina news station, which questioned the disappearance of money supplied to the city through the American Rescue Plan Act.
“I want to be clear, there is no money missing,” Simon said. “What the city is doing is simply a final accounting of ARPA funds. When we met recently, that was to provide an update on that accounting. The reason that we’re doing an internal review of that accounting is because what we’ve learned is that several years ago when the funds were received, the funds were not placed in a separate account. They were dispersed over several different accounts. Now there’s nothing illegal about that. But what it does is, it causes a lot of challenges whenever you’re accounting for those funds.”
This report will detail all expenditures and the impactful projects funded through ARPA, highlighting the administration’s diligent stewardship of these resources.
“The city, we’ve been working toward organizing those accounts for a number of years. A while back, the city actually hired a consultant to come in and help us organize our general ledgers. We recognize there were some challenges already,” he said. “Speaking with Mr. Bob Milhouse, who has conducted our audit for the last several years, he informed me of some issues that he had that needed to be corrected last year regarding where funds were placed regarding ARPA funds. That’s what we were doing and me as the city administrator coming in and inheriting everything, I asked the council to hire a consultant to provide us with a little more help here regarding organizing general ledgers and doing the final accounting of our ARPA funds.”
Council approved the request and the city is currently working with the consultant. While the ARPA funds came with instructions on how the money could be used, there were no guidelines as to what type of accounts that money should be placed in, he said.
“During this process one of the first things we’re doing is looking at the past projects, looking at how the money was spent for those projects. Not only are we doing that now, but that’s something that our auditors did last year and the year before that. In our audit report, he references how those funds were spent and he gave us some notes we needed to correct because we had funds in multiple accounts,” he said.
Bennettsville received a positive audit report in February and there had been no reports of missing funds from the city’s budget until “the assertion made by sensational news outlets.”
The city described the report as “not only baseless but also misleading. The City takes these allegations seriously, as they undermine public trust and the hard work of our dedicated staff who manage these funds with the utmost integrity. To correct the record and provide transparent insight into the actual state of affairs, we offer the following:
• Accountability: All funds used for past and current projects, or other expenditures have been logged, allocated, and spent in strict compliance with federal guidelines and City policies; past audits reflect this.
• Transparency: The City administration will hold a public forum for citizens to receive project updates and have the opportunity to ask questions about ARPA expenditures.
• Impact: ARPA funds have facilitated critical improvements in public health, safety, infrastructure, and economic support initiatives across the City of Bennettsville.”
Simon said, “Any reporting that uses anonymous sources stating that money is missing based off those sources, I’ll say is misleading at best. We are doing what any entity would be doing at this time because there are looming deadlines with ARPA funds.”
By the end of the year, those funds have to be earmarked for specific projects, he said. “As a part of our final accounting process, we have to make sure that those funds are obligated. Placing the money in multiple accounts made it more challenging to manage. It’s not like the city of Bennettsville did something illegal years ago, they just did something that made it more challenging moving forward. Now we’re at the year where funds must be reported and must be obligated fully. It is a challenge now, which is why we hired a consultant and why we have multiple people working on this project. And we’re comfortable that we’re going to be able to publish some information in a month, month in a half, showing how we can account for all of these funds.”
Simon has been the city administrator for less than a year. “I pledge to always strive for continuous improvement throughout the city of Bennettsville and I will continue to do so. It is going to be a challenge, but we’re going to be okay and we’re going to obtain the necessary resources to help us get through this transition period.”
Simon said it is very important that the public knows the city is working for them. “In order to combat these rumors and opinions of others, we’re just going to speak directly to our public and be transparent,” he said. “To do that, there will be copies of the last few years of the city’s audits available on the city’s website for the public to review. The City of Bennettsville remains dedicated to serving its citizens with transparency and integrity. We are committed to correcting any misinformation and are available to address any concerns that may arise from these misreports.
“The city is not broke and this year we are looking at passing a very conservative budget. The reason why we are looking at doing that is because our revenues have been slightly decreasing over the years and in a lot of cases our expenditures have sustained or increased in some of our areas. What we are finding is that we do need to do more with our utilities. We recently adjusted our fees to market value, in other words, we hadn’t adjusted our fees in a very long time and that was costing us.
“We know that we need to do more of that and I’m working closely with the council. We are running projections on further changes, even throughout the budget year in anticipation of maybe amending the budget in the second or third quarter or even for next year’s budget. Of course, I will be operating under the city council’s direction with those changes, but we know we need to do more along the lines of increasing our revenue to sustain our utilities.”
Simon said he welcomes the chance to speak to the public and answer questions about the process.
For more information or to speak with a city representative about this issue, please contact: Office of the City Administrator, City of Bennetsville, Phone: 843-479-9001 ext. 300, Email:info@bennetsvillesc.com.