At the epicenter of Monday’s backlash to the county’s proposed spending plan was a recommended budget that county manager Heidi York had debuted before Alamance County’s board of commissioners on May 19.
In this 183-page document, the county manager laid out roughly $274 million in spending recommendations – including some $229.7 million in outlays from the county’s general fund. A 2-percent increase over the general fund’s current budget, York’s spending plan calls for an extra $2.7 million to cover various “state mandated” hikes as well as discretionary payroll increases such as a 2-percent “cost of living adjustment” and a merit-based raise that averages out to 2.5 percent across Alamance County’s workforce.
On the other side of the ledger, York has proposed an increase of 1.59 cents, or nearly 3.4 percent, in the county’s property tax rate of 46.9 cents for every $100 of property value. This recommended bump in the property tax rate comes in spite of a previous directive from the commissioners for a “tax-neutral” budget. York has nevertheless hazarded this contrary recommendation due to an anticipated decline in sales tax receipts as well as her reluctance to raid the general fund’s savings, whose unencumbered portion has recently fallen below the board’s stated goal of maintaining at least 20 percent of the general fund’s outlays in ready reserve.
In addition to her proposed property tax increase, York has worked several cost saving measures into her spending plan. She has, for example, rejected almost all of the departmental requests she has received for replacement vehicles and more personnel. She has frozen some staff level openings, eliminated an imminently vacant assistant county manager’s post, and imposed a moratorium on longevity bonuses for veteran county employees.
York has also turned down a request for more funds from Burlington’s animal shelter, which serves the entirety of Alamance County. In the meantime, she has proposed no money at all for some external organizations such as Alamance County Rescue, Family Abuse Services, and Crossroads – a nonprofit resource center for victims of sexual abuse.
Perhaps York’s most contentious recommendation concerns the Alamance-Burlington school system. All told, the county manager is proposing to set aside about $72 million for the school system’s needs – a large chunk of which would go to facility improvements and debt service on school-related construction. York has also earmarked nearly $42 million for operational expenditures, which include certain support staff positions and a salary supplement that the county tacks on to the state-funded wages of teachers and school-level administrators.
York’s proposed operational allowance is about $11.3 million less than the county’s current budget allots to the school system’s operations – although a portion of the reduction comes from simply shifting the set aside for school resource officers from the school system’s budget to the local sheriff’s office. In the meantime, the proposed allocation falls $17 million short of the $59 million that the Alamance-Burlington school board had sought from the county to foot its non-capital operations in the next fiscal year.
Setting the record straight
Prior to Monday’s public hearing, York tried to set the record straight about some of the misconceptions that have emerged about her budget.
The county manager tried, for example, to dispel an entirely apocryphal claim that her budget would cut all funds for Burlington’s animal shelter rather than just the requested increase. She also corrected a mathematical error in her initial estimate of the proposed tax hike’s added cost to the average homeowner. She conceded on Monday that this increase comes out to $47.86 a year, and not the $52.80 she had reported last month.
York went on to stress that her proposed allocation for the school system isn’t nearly as harsh as it seems when the operational allowance is considered in isolation. She noted that, when maintenance, facilities upgrades, and school-related debt service are thrown into the mix, her recommended outlay of $72 million is actually an increase from this year’s allocation of $58.8 million. She added that the school system’s cumulative request of $78.6 million amounts to an extra $19.8 million on top of the current allotment – which she observed is the equivalent of about 7.5 cents on the property tax rate.
York was also at some pains to placate fears that her spending plan has stoked among patrons of the county’s library system. In actuality, York’s proposed budget calls for a 1.8 percent increase to the libraries, notwithstanding objections from commissioner Ed Priola to the library system’s allegedly “bloated” personnel budget.
Prior to the release of York’s budget, Priola had suggested that the county could phase out its financial contribution to the library system’s four branches, so that they’d be entirely bankrolled by the municipalities where they’re located.
Currently, the county pays for the operations of these branches under a cost-sharing arrangement that saw the cities of Burlington, Mebane, and Graham put up the capital to build the facilities. York’s recommended budget doesn’t propose any change to this long-standing state of affairs. The county manager may have nevertheless muddied the waters with an alternative that she proffered to the commissioners last month should they want to forgo her proposed property tax increase.
Under this competing option, the county would close the branches in Mebane and Graham as well as Burlington’s North Park, while continuing to fund May Memorial Library in Burlington. The manager’s alternative scenario also called for the layoff of 30 county staff members in “non-mandatory” positions and $2.4 million in reductions to her recommendations for staff compensation to offset the $4.4 million that the tax increase would presumably bring in.
Two minute take
Before Monday’s public hearing, each of the commissioners took up to two minutes to make any preliminary remarks to the general public. Priola used his allotted time to blast York for having presented the commissioners with “the worst possible way” to achieve a budget without any increase in property taxes.
“Closing three libraries [in the county’s manager’s alternative budget without raising property taxes] is not something we discussed. What we did discuss is having some of libraries funded by the municipalities they’re in. What we wanted is options; not closing libraries.”
– County commissioner Ed Priola
“Closing three libraries is not something we discussed,” he added in an attempt to distance the manager’s proposal from his own suggestion for a “phased separation.” “What we did discuss is having some of libraries funded by the municipalities they’re in,” the commissioner added, “What we wanted is options; not closing libraries.”
Priola’s contention was later echoed by John Paisley, Jr. the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners.”
“I haven’t heard any county commissioner talking about deleting the libraries,” Paisley added before regurgitating complaint that he has previously aired about Burlington’s May Memorial Library. “I probably received 50 phone calls about people who said ‘I don’t carry my children to May Memorial library because of homeless people sitting in the couches or sleeping in the aisles.’”
Priola was also backed up by the board’s vice chairman, Steve Carter, who weighed in to the discussion remotely from Topsail Island.
“Nobody asked to close the libraries,” he said. “We’ve had several conversations about library staffing…and about reconfiguration with the municipalities.”
Carter went on to concede that that the county’s next budget will inevitably irk patrons of any department or program that finds itself on the short end of the seesaw.
“Whatever department it is, if you need them, you want them,” he added. “The problem is that you have a school system which is funded about $10 million more than they were last year.”
