Selma advisory board approves donation and sponsorship policies for council review, tables athlete scholarship details

The Town of Selma Summer Recreation Advisory Board voted Dec. 17 to send two acceptance policies — one for donation procedures and one for parks-and-recreation sponsorships — to the town council for review, and approved a spirit-wear fundraiser that will direct a portion of proceeds to the athlete scholarship fund. The board postponed final action on a detailed athlete scholarship policy and asked staff to return with more specifics in January.

The policies forwarded to council establish how the department will accept monetary and in-kind gifts and the process for sponsorships tied to Parks and Recreation programs. A separate action approved by the board directed staff to pursue a spirit-wear fundraiser; the agenda item specifies that a percentage of proceeds would be allocated to the scholarship fund, and board members asked staff to clarify language before council review.

Why it matters: these policies set the administrative rules that will govern how recreation programs raise and handle outside funds, how sponsors will be assigned to teams and facilities, and how potential scholarship recipients will be verified and selected. Board members said clear rules are needed to protect donors, ensure equity among applicants and limit staff workload.

Board discussion focused most heavily on the proposed athlete scholarship rules, which the packet set out as eligibility, income verification and a lottery-based award process. Under the version presented, applicants must be Selma residents within city limits and the household income must be less than $38,000 annually (the packet cites a US Census median household income for Selma of $37,440, rounded in the policy). The packet requires applicants to submit two recent pay stubs and describes a lottery to be drawn on the first work day after the registration period ends. The policy also proposes collecting donations from Jan. 0 through March 0 and distributing whatever funds are raised evenly across spring, fall and winter seasons.

Parks and recreation staff said verification will be handled by attaching pay-stub documentation to the applicant's RecDesk profile and that staff would verify pay stubs only for lottery winners rather than reviewing every submission. "We are not going to check everyone's pay stub as they come in. We're just gonna attach them, and then once the winners are drawn, we're just gonna verify the winners," a Parks and Recreation staff member said.

Several board members raised concerns about that process. One member urged the board to include confidentiality and records-destruction provisions for sensitive payroll documents and recommended limiting how long pay stubs remain attached to a RecDesk profile. Another board member warned that emailed pay stubs could become subject to public-records requests and urged staff to consult the town attorney and RecDesk's data-retention policies before making email an accepted submission method. A board member also proposed moving the funding/distribution rules out of the eligibility policy into a separate, more flexible funding policy.

Income threshold drew active debate. One board member said the $38,000 threshold was too high for the board's intent to help the lowest-income households and suggested reducing eligibility to the Johnston County poverty level cited by the member (about $31,200 for a family of four, as discussed in the meeting). Staff and other members noted lowering the threshold would reduce the applicant pool and that the board could add further restrictions later.

Because of the outstanding questions — chiefly data privacy and the proper household-income cutoff — the board voted to table the athlete scholarship policy and asked staff to convene additional review, accept written board comments by email, and return a revised draft at the January advisory-board meeting. "I'm gonna make a motion we table this particular one and figure out if we can either have a working session or something to add more meat to that," a board member said; the motion to table passed on a voice vote.

In separate actions, the board approved forwarding a parks-and-rec sponsorship acceptance policy to council with minor corrections (including deadline clarifications, language about banner opportunities and social-media recognition) and approved sending the spirit-wear fundraiser proposal to council with two requested edits: clarify the percentage of proceeds that will go to the scholarship fund in the text and add a preference language for local vendors where practical. On the spirit-wear item a board member asked staff to "try our best to utilize local" vendors; staff noted the town has no binding requirement to purchase locally but agreed to add preference language.

The board directed staff to return with the revised athlete scholarship policy, updated RecDesk and document-retention plans, and clarified funding language ahead of the council review.