Darlington files formal complaint against FEMA over reimbursements
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Despite several attempts to get reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the City of Darlington has only collected $16,000. City Manager Howard Garland talked with city council members during a council budget work session May 31 about the delays they’ve been experiencing.
“Congressman Rice had a representative here, Philip Gaillard, and we filed an official complaint with his office about FEMA,” Garland said. “They said that they will run it up the flagpole and see if we can get a response. Basically it says that we have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the money to come back from Hurricane Matthew reimbursements and they haven’t given it to us. It is $440,000.”
Garland wrote in his official complaint that FEMA has requested the same information from the City of Darlington five times. Each time, the agency had a small complaint about the information given to them and requested it again.
“We are a small minority town and need every dollar to balance our budget,” Garland wrote.
Another item on the worksession budget was the need for resurfacing streets in the city. Garland gave council members a list from 2017 of streets that need to be resurfaced and their priority. He said that a new list would be made soon, some of the streets on the current list have been fixed, and that he wanted council to help identify areas of need.
“I urge you that if you see something and it is not on here, text or leave a message on the phone because we are going to update this in the next eight weeks,” Garland said. “I want ya’ll to have a baseline to work from so this list is just for general information.”
Council also talked about raising millage for the city, though no decision was made. Garland will be bringing more information to council at a future meeting.
According to a letter from the South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office to Darlington Clerk/Treasurer Gloria Pridgen the most council can choose to raise the millage is 2.13 percent.
“The population of the City of Darlington decreased 0.56 percent from 2016 to 2017 according to the annual estimates of resident population for incorporated places from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Division released in May 2018,” the letter said. “As outlined in statute, the negative population factor is deemed to be 0 percent. Combining these two components yields a cap of 2.13 percent on the millage rate increase for the City of Darlington for FY 2017-2018.”
Garland said that he is working with the bond attorney and Darlington County to verify what a mil is for the City of Darlington. Once he knows for certain what the mil rate is he can determine how much an increase would bring in for the city.
