Mount Olive Town Commissioner Barbara Kornegay says that efforts will continue to find funding for a video camera surveillance system. The town’s funding request to the office of NC-13 Congressman Wiley Nickel for the project fell short. (Steve Herring|mountolivetribune.com)
Mount Olive Town Commissioner Barbara Kornegay holds up a four-page printout of town needs — needs the town is constantly in search of funding to meet.
“We’ve got ideas,” Kornegay said. “We’ve got statistics and numbers that we can use, and we work on it when the opportunity (for funding) comes in front of us.”
The most recent opportunity arrived last month in the form of an email from the office of newly elected NC-District 13 Congressman Wiley Nickel.
Unfortunately, that opportunity did not come to fruition.
Nickel said his office could take two requests from each town in the district for community projects for possible funding for the fiscal year 2024 appropriations process.
However, he added that he could submit only 15 total from the district.
The town had two ideas ready to go — a video camera surveillance system and plans to renovate the Carver Cultural Center gym to serve as an emergency shelter.
The town submitted a $150,000 request for the emergency shelter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a $70,000 request for the video camera surveillance system.
“I had a week to write it and submit it, and it wasn’t a long proposal,” Kornegay said. “It was five or six pages, but still, you got to have your facts together.
“We’re not going to drop it (funding search). It’s just that if we have to spend Mount Olive money, it will not be until the next (town) budget, which will be in July and forward. So now is a good time to be collecting up our information.”
The shelter request did not make it past the initial cut.
“I think, probably, the reason they rejected that one and went for the surveillance system is because it was cheaper … they had told us the smaller you can do, the more likely you are to get funded,” Kornegay explained.
“They followed up after I had submitted everything and said ‘can you give us a detailed budget on the surveillance camera plan?’ Fortunately, (Police Chief) Jason (Hughes) had gotten me numbers, and we had something to submit.”
The number Hughes provided was $75,000 — $5,000 more than Kornegay’s initial request. That is the estimated cost to junk the whole existing system and start from scratch, she added.
However, it also failed to make the final cut.
Kornegay has contacted Nickel’s office to see if there might be any funding alternatives, but has not yet received a response.
“However, I will use the information I have collected to submit for the next grant opportunity,” she said. “My next search is based on the need for way-finding signs in town. I am looking at T-Mobile as a possible funder.”
During the board’s March ordinance workshop, Hughes said that he had been talking to two or three vendors, but that none of them was really excited about working with the town or maybe it’s just getting back to the town, Kornegay said.
“We don’t know if it’s working with us or not, and we think part of that is because the company we originally had went out of business,” she added. “Then they re-formed and evidently some of their people were still with the second company, but they’re not very responsive.
“They’re very expensive, and so that’s why we got another quote. I just don’t know where that’s going … we really need this surveillance system, and we need more cameras.”
Hughes has been talking to people who tell him the town’s existing system is too out of date for them to do anything with and that it is going to be very costly. Tthe town really should just replace it, Kornegay said.
The old system had 15 cameras. Kornegay put 20 in her proposal to Nickel.
The cameras can be moved around to to strategic places as needed, she said.
“That puts people off their game if they have some malicious intent, but it also allows you to surveil something that you know has a lot of traffic or has other stuff going on that you need to be watching,” Kornegay explained.
Gym renovation
Like the video camera surveillance system, the gym renovation project has been on the needs list for years.
The town currently uses the gym for it recreation programs.However, an ongoing goal has been to renovate it so that it can be used as an emergency shelter because when the Neuse River floods, people south of the river can’t get to the county shelter, Kornegay explained.
“If you remember in previous years when we had Hurricane Matthew and then Florence we had people flooded out of their homes,” Kornegay added. “Of course, we’re doing everything we can in the town to help reduce that flooding with flood mitigation projects.
“But in the meantime, as those projects are not completed, and if we have another hurricane, and people can’t get across the river to that particular shelter, we need something here. We used both our our elementary and middle schools last time and they really are not appropriate.”
The school is just not setup to handle that kind of use, she added.
Also, Kornegay said she thinks at one point there was a leak even at one of the schools and the people sheltering there had to be moved elsewhere
Several years ago the town sought funding for the gym project through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“They said yes, ‘we’re going to give you some money,’” Kornegay said. “I think it was a big chunk of money and then FEMA got reorganized, and we lost the money.”
David Harris, the town’s consultant for federal Community Development Block Grants, tried to figure out what happened to that money, she said.
“He came to the board meeting about six or eight months ago and explained it is gone — you’re not getting it,” she said.
