County commissioner Ed Priola has proven himself a real friend of, and advocate for, Alamance County’s taxpayers this week.
We commend his efforts to dig deeper than most commissioners typically go into the proposed budget and to devise his own plan for reducing some of the outrageous spending increases included by county manager Heidi York and, instead, keep the property tax rate flat – at the already high rate of 46.9 cents per $100 valuation.
We have extrapolated and reprinted nearby two of Priola’s most effective charts. They clearly show: Alamance County government spending is running higher than the increase in local incomes, higher than the rate of inflation, and higher than population growth.
[Editorial continues below charts.]
Alamance County hasn’t had, and doesn’t have, a problem with too little in county revenues; both property taxes and sales taxes, the two largest pots of income, are consistently increasing, as Priola’s research shows.
No, the problem is that spending is simply out of control.
And it starts at the top. We’ve said before and we continue to believe that much of the problem begins with county manager Heidi York and her failure to manage county government more effectively.
When she came, there was a county manager and one assistant.
She’s ballooned her own office – with enormous financial implications – to consist of a deputy county manager and two assistant county managers. Granted, she’s (finally) recommending to trim one of the two assistants – but apparently only inasmuch as he’s retiring. Total price tag currently: $686,000.
Meanwhile, she’s also expanded the size of her budget/finance area. There are now five employees with combined salaries of almost half a million dollars ($459,960, to be exact).
Meanwhile, county government as a whole now has over 34 people with annual salaries over $100,000 – to say nothing of another 80 or so whose benefits bring their total compensation to more than $100,000.
But not to be deterred, York proposes a grand total of 4½ percent in raises for them all – 2 percent as a supposed “cost of living” raise, and another average increase of 2½ percent for so-called merit.
This is the newest fad in governments, both county and municipal, to sneak in so-called “merit” increases. “Merit” sounds like a worthy concept, which is why it’s become such a popular governmental phrase. But if everyone’s going to get one, or even if the average is calculated in advance, it can’t represent much of what private sector workers would consider actual “merit.”
In other words, York’s assuming that, on average, employees will get that additional 2½ percent raise. For what? Doing their jobs, for which we would suggest they’re generally pretty well paid already and getting significant increases – not even counting additional costs for health care premiums which taxpayers must bear (even if they, themselves, don’t have any healthcare coverage).
Even by standards York described, inflation hasn’t been more than 2 percent over the past year, but she’s listing potential raises that will cost taxpayers millions more – and far in excess of the inflation rate.
But even if we accept that 2 percent is the rate of inflation, why should taxpayers pay more than the rate of inflation – 3.4 percent more in property taxes, which is what her 1.59-cent property tax increase translates to.
It’s one thing to have a budget that “keeps pace” with inflation – the favorite term of bureaucrats everywhere – but it’s quite another when spending (and benefits) run well above inflation.
Then there’s the rather significant matter of the county’s savings account, or “fund balance,” in the parlance of government.
The county has quite a pot of money at the end of the rainbow, which York wants to keep available for other (future) spending.
The county, as of its last audit (June 30, 2024), had $96.9 million in total fund balance in its general fund, $41 million of which was “unassigned.”
That’s a huge pot of money that could spare taxpayers from this year’s property tax increase.
It’s been our observation over many years that these “fund balances” actually represent the accumulation of years of over-taxation of area residents.
We’d rather see some of that previous over-taxation used to offset the need for this year’s proposed tax increase.
And, of course, York has also played the usual funhouse mirrors trick with sales taxes. Unlike every other local jurisdiction, she is forecasting a reduction in sales tax revenues for 2025-2026. Not a modest increase (the state is even predicting a statewide increase of over 8 percent).
But, if she’s wrong, as we strongly suspect she will be, that surplus money, coupled with the over-taxation from another property tax increase, will simply be added to the county’s already huge fund balance.
Priola’s proposed alternative budget may need some tweaking, which other commissioners could help with, but his overall insights into the trends of county government are absolutely accurate, and very disturbing, indeed.
We certainly hope commissioners will come together to overrule their county manager and develop a budget that taxpayers can afford – without having to pay higher property taxes.
