Lumbee Tribal Council OKs $26.7 million budget by a vote of 10 to 9

Sep. 17—PEMBROKE — The Lumbee Tribal Council passed a $26.7 million budget Thursday, but the vote was far from unanimous.

The proposed 2021-21 fiscal year budget ordinance was approved on a 10-9 vote, with Carvicous Barfield, Ted Woodell, Richard Jones, Annie Taylor, Carrington Locklear, Reginald Oxendine, Yvonne Dial, Wendy Moore and Chocajuana Oxendine voting no. Marshil Locklear abstained from the vote and Larry Chavis recused himself.

Before the vote, Jones, who represents District 6, expressed concern over a lack of requested information. Moore, of District 5, told Finance Committee Chair Pam Hunt that the proposed budged lacked much of the provisions discussed during a previous meeting.

"In the Finance Committee meeting, we had a lot of provisions and I'm just wandering where the rest of them was," Moore said.

Hunt said she was not concerned by the split vote and will clarify any concerns in future meetings.

"On any board you're going to have some division but I think that it was just concerns and I hope to alleviate those concerns at our next Finance meeting," Hunt said.

The new budget, set at $26,748,353.50, is about $4.6 million more than the current year's spending plan.

Five work sessions were held to craft the new budget, Hunt said.

"But most importantly, we allowed the people to voice their opinion before we even started working on it and a lot of things that people wanted were incorporated," Hunt said.

Some of the requests were more money for veterans and education, and earmarking funds for victims of domestic violence, Hunt said.

The people also saw no need to staff the newly formed Historic Preservation Program with two people, leading the Council to limit it to one person.

Tribal Chairman Harvey Godwin Jr. has 10 days to sign or veto the budget. Because the budget ordinance must be signed by the chairman and made public for 30 days before becoming law, Council approved a continuing resolution to continue funding operations fiscal year 2021-2022 using the 2020-2021 budget from Oct. 1 through Nov. 30.

In other budget news, Tribal Council approved an addendum to the budget and any future budgets prohibiting the use of tribal funds to build a model home on the same property on which sits the Tribal Administrative Building.

Hunt said Council decided the $200,000 earmarked for the project is to be used for housing for the Lumbee people.

"Since the first hurricane, just in Lumberton alone, not even the whole county, we lost 1,700 homes and still to this day there's not enough houses going up for people to live, so that's our main concern," Hunt said.

In other news, state budget concerns and the rising COVID-19 positivity rates were topics mentioned in Larece Hunt's update on the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs latest meeting.

Larece Hunt said the Commission requested $125,000 from the state to be used for the Recognition Committee.

"Right now it looks like they're going to cut us down to $100,000," Hunt said.

The Commission also requested $85,000 for the creation of an assistant director position, but were allocated about $55,000, Hunt said.

Siting the latest numbers released by the Robeson County Health Department, Larece Hunt told Tribal Council members that COVID-19 is killing their people. Hunt said only 26% of the Lumbee Tribe's more than 50,000 members have been vaccinated.

"We have an issue with this virus," Hunt said. "We are loosing our people."

In other action, Council voted to support the use of the Tribe's logo in the design and production of an official Lumbee Tribal Harley Davidson T-shirt.

Tomeka Sinclair can be reached at [email protected] or 910-416-5865.