The city’s Community Outreach Department or TrustBuild is no more.

Mayor George Evans said the program instituted by the previous city administration has become part of the cost-cutting effort to reduce the 2009 fiscal year budget to $17 million.

In the adopted 2008 budget, Community Outreach cost the city $296,606.60, which included a director and staff, benefits, vehicle allowance travel training and conferences and special advertisement.

Actual expenditures through Sept. 30, 2008, showed the department spent $253,659.30. But in the proposed budget, all that drops by $232,654.86.

Here’s what happens, according to Evans: Some of the staff and other resources go into code enforcement for the city.

“The city needs code enforcement,” Evans said. “We know that.”

TrustBuild had begun as a community development-based strategy on crime to build trust in the community and concentrate on criminal hotspots.

But the department was criticized by many in Selma as a boondoogle to promote the previous administration.

One of the program’s most severe critics was Councilman Cecil Williamson, who consistently called it “Perkins’ re-election committee” — a reference to former Mayor James Perkins Jr., who organized the program.

Perkins held office for eight years but was defeated in his bid for a third term by Evans.

During the campaign, Evans had said he would dismantle TrustBuild.