The Vance Organization to Implement Community Excellence wants the area’s elected officials to know that the new group is united behind the need for the maximum possible funding for law enforcement agencies.
Henderson City Manager Eric Williams, who continued in his role as VOICE’s facilitator during the group’s regular meeting Wednesday morning at the Aycock Recreation Complex, plans to speak for the organization Monday night during the City Council’s meeting.
To get VOICE on the record during this budget season, Williams said, he’ll make time on the agenda to let the council know that “this organization is very concerned about the matter of public safety as it relates to city resources and the budget.”
“I’m preaching to the choir here,” he said. “They all know how important public safety is. Their big dilemma is how to meet this point” where expenses and revenues match for the next fiscal year.
“I think this is important because the choir often needs preaching to,” said Dollie Burwell, who runs Congressman G.K. Butterfield’s Weldon district office, which serves the Democrat’s Henderson constituents.
“What you’re seeing is powerful,” said Garry Daeke, the resources coordinator for the Franklin-Granville-Vance Partnership for Children. Because VOICE represents a couple of dozen agencies and businesses, council members will see that hundreds of people are behind the organization’s request to maximize the police budget.
Police Chief Glen Allen regularly attends VOICE meetings but was absent Wednesday because the three-man team from the Commisssion on Assessment for Law Enforcement Agencies was wrapping up its visit to Henderson.
VOICE member Marolyn Rasheed, who leads Team Vance, sparked the discussion by asking how people can best make such budget feelings clear to the council. She also hopes to get her husband, Abdul, to urge the county commissioners to put as much money as possible into law enforcement, in light of their son’s unsolved murder from last year.
By law, Williams said, the city will hold at least one public hearing on his budget proposal, likely in June. But Daeke said city leaders usually make the big decisions before that hearing.
To influence the process earlier, people may sign up to speak during the public-comment section of any of the twice-monthly council meetings, or they may talk during the freewheeling Speak Up Henderson sessions held from 6 to 7 p.m. before each council meeting.
While the budget issue involves VOICE members taking their concerns to officials, the group will try to bring in officials to address another issue Rasheed raised: how magistrates set bond amounts.
“It is mysterious at times if you’re not in there,” Williams said of the Vance County magistrate’s office.
Police Lt. Irvin Robinson said the magistrates operate under guidelines that set a bond range for each charge.
Williams said he’ll make sure Chief District Judge Charles Wilkinson, who oversees the magistrates, or the chief magistrate, Betty Fields, is invited to a VOICE meeting to shed light on the bond process.
That invitation fits the information-gathering phase VOICE is going through. The group just adopted its name two weeks ago, and it still lacks officers, committees or any other formal structure.
The group agreed Wednesday to address some of those issues at its next meeting, set for May 4.
At that time VOICE intends to form a nominating committee to name candidates for chairman, vice chairman, secretary and any other necessary positions. Williams said a treasurer probably won’t be needed “because there’s no money.”
Burwell pointed out that part of the officer-selection process must be a decision on whether VOICE’s members are there as individuals or strictly as representatives of their organizations. Elnora O’Hara, who heads the Vance County Coalition Against Violence, noted that the coalition selected Loree Adams as its official VOICE voice, but many coalition members attend the meetings.
Ben Foti of the Kerr-Tar Regional Council of Governments tied the organizational efforts to a task he, Donna Stearns and Cliff Rogers took on in early March at the group’s second meeting: to create a comprehensive report on the services VOICE’s agencies provide.
Only nine agencies responded to a one-page resources survey by Wednesday morning, even though the group identified the survey as a priority. A driving goal of VOICE is to bring grants and other resources into Vance County to fight crime and its causes, and the group needs to know what’s available here before looking to fill the gaps.
Foti set the next VOICE meeting as the deadline for the resources survey. He acknowledged that filling out the survey is “a tedious task,” but it’s crucial.
“Feel free to contact those you haven’t heard from and prod them along,” Williams said.