  We consider a singular stochastic control problem, which is called the
Monotone Follower Stochastic Control Problem and give sufficient conditions for
the existence and uniqueness of a local-time type optimal control. To establish
this result we use a methodology that has not been employed to solve singular
control problems. We first confine ourselves to local time strategies. Then we
apply a transformation to the total reward accrued by reflecting the diffusion
at a given boundary and show that it is linear in its continuation region. Now,
the problem of finding the optimal boundary becomes a non-linear optimization
problem: The slope of the linear function and an obstacle function need to be
simultaneously maximized. The necessary conditions of optimality come from
first order derivative conditions. We show that under some weak assumptions
these conditions become sufficient. We also show that the local time strategies
are optimal in the class of all monotone increasing controls.
  As a byproduct of our analysis, we give sufficient conditions for the value
function to be $\mathbf{C}^2$ on all its domain.
  We solve two dividend payment problems to show that our sufficient conditions
are satisfied by the examples considered in the mainstream literature. We show
that our assumptions are satisfied not only when capital of a company is
modeled by a Brownian motion with drift but also when we change the modeling
assumptions and use a square root process to model the capital.
