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Thursday, February 25, 2010 — I was elected as your mayor this past November and since that time I have worked diligently with the City Council and city staff on plans to make Locust an even better place to live, work and play.
At the same time we have worked hard on ways to streamline our expenses by consolidating work loads and moving some fulltime positions to part time positions. Part of my endeavors is to see all city staff in one location in a building that the city owns rather than spread out in rental property.
At the present moment the City of Locust rents three facilities to accommodate the police department, library and city hall. The present space is not adequate for city services and none of the three buildings were designed for what the city is using them for in fact an evaluation of the police department facility by an outside consultant found serious safety issues with that location for police services.
The options that the city has to choose from are to either build a new facility or to continue renting. Dennie Martin, one of the state’s leading municipal financial consultants and a principal in Martin-McGill Associates, prepared a 10-year comparative cost analysis to help determine whether building a new building made good financial sense.
The cost analysis provided key benefits to building a new complex:
• Owning will take ad-vantage of low interest rate market, which may not be available in the future.
• Owning a space is less costly per square foot
Leasing - $29.20
New - $11.52
• Owning will provide cash flow savings by FY 2012.
• Owning will create equity for the City.
• Owning will save an estimated $318,947 over a ten year span.
As you can easily see, the building of a new facility will lead to major cost savings for the tax payers in our city.
As your mayor I am committed to working to making your local government accountable and cost effective in these difficult times.
The use of stimulus money will enable us to not only save ourselves money but also put many of our local workers back to work.
Please feel free to contact me at City Hall at (704) 888-5260 or by e-mail at mayor@locustnc.com with any concerns you may have about this issue or any other.
Mayor Scott Efird
Locust
