County commissioner Ed Priola broke with tradition last week when he booked a formal appearance before his fellow commissioners to poke holes in the recommended budget that county manager Heidi York had presented to them in May.
Priola went on to chastise the county’s management for the runaway growth that he said has characterized their spending patterns, and he offered his colleagues a quick peak at some potential reductions that he assured them would nullify a 1.59-cent property tax hike that York had proposed.
This week, it was Priola’s turn to be on the defensive as his suggested cuts came up for debate during a two-day work session on the county’s next budget. Along the way, the county’s administrators presented additional details that cast doubt on most of the commissioner’s proposals, and when all was said and done, some of his fellow commissioners were left thinking that the county manager may not have gone far enough in her recommended tax increase.
The gradual evisceration of Priola’s suggestions didn’t seem to deter the first-term Republican from his conviction that the county is living outside its means.
“Ed likes the Priola plan,” he conceded in facetious third-person as the commissioners shared their thoughts on the budget at the end of the second day of the work session. “I’m not in favor of any tax increase. We’ve got plenty of resources. We’ve got to have the will to cut where we can.”
Yet, the rest of the board had little appetite for most of Priola’s proposed cuts, which included rollbacks in capital outlays, reductions in merit-based pay raises for staff, and the elimination of 13 positions from the county’s library system, the tax department, and the county manager’s office.
Priola had briefly presented these same recommendations a week earlier when he mounted his formal challenge to the county manager’s spending plan after a three-hour public hearing on her recommended budget.
Priola said at the time that York’s suggested tax hike could be rendered unnecessary through some strategic reductions to non-essential services.
To this end, he proposed $4.2 million in budgetary adjustments that included the elimination of $2.4 million in capital outlays, the cancellation of a $25,000 subsidy for Burlington’s Link Transit bus system, and the restriction of the county’s traditional merit-based pay raise to top performing staff in order to save another $500,000.
Priola also called on his colleagues to reduce the bottom line by another $1.1 million by jettisoning five positions in the county’s tax office, six posts in its libraries, and two in the county manager’s office that he considered redundant.
In addition to these expense-side revisions, Priola also suggested that the county should use past experience to estimate the reimbursements that the local elections office will receive from the county’s cities and towns for conducting this fall’s municipal elections.
He said that this approach would justify the addition of $175,000 to next year’s anticipated revenues.
Priola subsequently came up with several more revenue suggestions that made their appearance during this week’s work session. These proposals included budgeting an additional $700,000 from the county’s savings, rejiggering the county manager’s sales tax projections to match a 4.2 percent increase which Governor Josh Stein has proposed for the state, and issuing $1.37 million in bonds that remain from a $150 million package which voters approved for the Alamance-Burlington school system in 2018.
Priola had proffered these revenue adjustments in order to restore subsidies to the Alamance County Rescue Unit and several other nonprofits that York had dropped from her proposed spending plan. He nevertheless maintained his original contention that overspending rather than a shortage of revenue is the biggest problem facing the county government’s finances.
During his presentation last week, Priola argued that county spending had gone up 74 percent over the past 10 years, even as inflation rose 35 percent. He also observed that, between 2015 and 2023, personal income rose 42 percent in Alamance County, as compared to the 62 percent that county spending went up during that same period.
The county manager kicked off this week’s work session by “clarifying” some of the data that Priola had offered to bolster his argument about the untrammeled growth of county government spending. She went on to present a chart of her own that zeroed in on the county’s general fund instead of all of the various funds that the commissioner had used in his comparison. York also highlighted three years in which the general fund’s budget was inflated by federal pandemic relief dollars, unusually robust sales tax receipts, and the debt payments on $187.9 in bonds that the county’s voters approved in 2018.
“Those three [factors] equal 42 percent [in budgetary growth],” she insisted, “already outpacing the 35 percent that Mr. Priola said came from inflation…When adjusted for inflation the increase over the same period is about 16 percent.”
RECENT BUDGET YEARS NOT TYPICAL
[County manager Heidi York highlighted three years in which the general fund’s budget was inflated by federal pandemic relief dollars, unusually robust sales tax receipts, and the debt payments on $187.9 in bonds that the county’s voters approved in 2018.] “Those three [factors] equal 42 percent [in budgetary growth], already outpacing the 35 percent that Mr. Priola said came from inflation…When adjusted for inflation,the increase over the same period is about 16 percent.”
Priola didn’t exactly let the county manager’s rebuttal go unaddressed.
16% ISN’T MINIMAL GROWTH
[An increase of] 16 percent is what you [cited in response] to my presentation, and you call that minimal?! I disagree with that characterization.”
– County commissioner Ed Priola
“[An increase of] 16 percent is what you [cited in response] to my presentation,” the commissioner said, “and you call that minimal?! I disagree with that characterization.”
Priola went on to flourish a copy of The Alamance News in which the county had advertised several pages of tax liens earlier this spring. The commissioner noted that these liens are associated with a total of 3,451 delinquent accounts.
“These liens represent widespread household distress in Alamance County,” he added. “It’s a sign of distress that so many people are falling behind economically… For many households, especially those on fixed incomes, this is not something small.”
Priola stuck to his guns as the county manager turned her attention to the particulars of his budgetary recommendations. Yet, the manager’s scrutiny seemed to tip the scales against the Priola Plan for most of his fellow commissioners.
Priola’s proposed $2.4 million cut to capital expenditures was more or less dead in the water once York pointed out that the funds had been set aside for the purchase of ambulances and maintenance on county-owned buildings.
Meanwhile, the commissioner’s recommendation to restrict merit-based pay to top-performers raised a number of concerns for the county manager.
“We were trying to create a stable program in county government where employees know the expectations,” she told the county’s elected leaders.
“We have metrics, we have work plans, we have goals, and we follow them each year…if we change it to just one level it removes expectations and puts merit pay at the whim of the board…Also, if you take away the cost of living adjustment, department heads feel pressure to use merit to advance pay.”
Priola countered that it makes no sense to him to award merit-based raises to workers with “fair to poor performance,” although he added that the county’s employee handbook assures them they’ll get a 1 percent bump in their salaries.
“I’m asking why those folks get to keep their jobs instead of any kind of merit pay,” he objected.
This rejoinder drew a mixed response from the other commissioners – with the board’s vice chairman Steve Carter concurring that it’s “unreasonable” for staff to remain on the job if they demonstrate fair to poor performance year after year.
“I can say that about politicians, too,” commissioner Pam Thompson shot back.
Meanwhile, Priola seemed to lose the confidence of the board’s chairman John Paisley when he said that the county could save additional money by forgoing merit-based raises for the first half of the year to make sure the county’s sales tax receipts can cover the additional cost.
“In accounting, you have to look at the real numbers, you don’t guess, you don’t speculate, you don’t roll the dice,” Paisley told his fellow Republican. “We can’t speculate what will happen in six months in our budget today.”
It didn’t help Priola’s case when York pointed out that merit-based raises are distributed on the anniversary of a staff member’s arrival – meaning that about half the staff will be arbitrarily passed over if the raises are postponed for six months.
Priola’s proposal to nudge up the county’s sales tax projections proved equally contentious with the county’s administrators.
Susan Evans, the county’s finance director, insisted that she can’t simply cut and paste the governor’s estimates into the county’s budget because of a 17-year-old Medicaid “swap” that affects how much revenue the state passes along to the county each year. Evans recalled that, under this swap, the state took over the county’s one-time responsibility for Medicaid reimbursements as well as a portion of its sales tax receipts to cover the added expense. In theory, the state has agreed to hold the county “harmless” for any net loss in revenue due to the swap, although she added that the payments to offset this loss can be somewhat sporadic.
“In fiscal year 2025, Alamance County did not receive any Medicaid hold harmless because our sales tax revenue was greater than our Medicaid costs,” Evans explained. “In 2023, we received the max in Medicaid hold harmless, which was $2.4 million. In 2024, we’ve received $619,000 and we’ve been told that in fiscal year 2025, we won’t receive anything at all.”
The finance director added that the failure of these “hold harmless” funds to materialize this year has left the county with less sales tax revenue for the year than it had budgeted. Evans said that she has consequently projected a $664,293 decrease in next year’s sales tax receipts – a move that seemed perfectly reasonable to commissioner Kelly Allen.
“I think you’d rather be pleasantly surprised rather than bitterly disappointed,” Allen insisted.
Evans also balked at Priola’s recommendation to cash out the remainder of the bonds that the county’s voters approved in 2018. The finance director emphasized the regulatory hurdles and upfront expense that’s required to issue revenue bonds before she observed that the county would also have to pay an additional $638,000 in interest over the 20-year life of the bonds in order to secure $1.3 million in funds.
Priola got even less traction with the proposed staffing cuts which he included in his alternate spending plan.
Among the posts that Priola had slated for elimination were five appraisal positions in the county’s tax office that he assumed were redundant because the commissioners had decided to outsource the next countywide property revaluation shortly before he himself joined the county’s governing board.
York called on the county’s new tax administrator Brad Fowler to explain why he needs five in-house appraisers now that a private company is handling the reval. Fowler stressed that his staff still has to deal with the day-to-day appraisals that stem from new construction and other development-related changes.
TAX ADMINISTRATOR SAYS IN-HOUSE STAFF STILL NEEDED
“Annually,we have 12,000 permits that need to be looked at each year, we have 2,000 splits a year, and 8,200 sales that need to be qualified and that’s in addition to our daily customer service and our present use value program.
“I think it’s a misnomer that an outside agency can always do better than in-house. But first, we have to get staffed up. . . The tax office cannot sustain those cuts. . . and if you decide not to fill these [five] positions, it will be more costly to the county. – Tax administrator Brad Fowler
“Annually,” he added, “we have 12,000 permits that need to be looked at each year, we have 2,000 splits a year, and 8,200 sales that need to be qualified and that’s in addition to our daily customer service and our present use value program.”
Fowler conceded that Vincent Valuations, the county’s revaluation contractor, has offered to take over these assorted duties for a fee of $600,000. He nevertheless said that it would be less costly for him to use in-house labor to attend to this work.
“I think it’s a misnomer that an outside agency can always do better than in-house,” he argued. “But first, we have to get staffed up…The tax office cannot sustain those cuts…and if you decide not to fill these [five] positions, it will be more costly to the county.
Priola’s staffing assumptions proved equally tenuous in the case of the county’s libraries, where he had identified six positions for potential removal.
Priola had been particularly critical of the libraries for their reliance on part-time staff, who he assumed were receiving benefits like health coverage and retirement on the county government’s dime.
Susana Goldman, the library system’s director, acknowledged that she supervises a small number of part-timers who receive prorated benefits because their hours approach those of her full-time employees. She added, however, that the 17 part-time workers that had found themselves in Priola’s sights receive no benefits other than unemployment and put in relatively short work weeks of 15 hours or so.
DIRECTOR SAYS LIBRARY STAFF SHOULDN’T BE CUT, AS PRIOLA RECOMMENDs
“Because the library is open more than an eight hour day, it takes more people to work the service desk, and an average library has three service desks. But these are not benefitted positions because they do not go over the number of hours in a year [that would make them eligible for any perks.”
– Susanna Goldman, Library Director
“Because the library is open more than an eight hour day, it takes more people to work the service desk, and an average library has three service desks,” she elaborated. “But these are not benefitted positions because they do not go over the number of hours in a year [that would make them eligible for any perks.”
In the meantime, York herself took the lead in defending the current staffing levels in the county manager’s office.
York assured the commissioners that she needs both of the posts that Priola had proposed to strip from her office.
“We have zero administrative support,” she insisted. “I write every single letter, schedule every single meeting…We deal a lot of with capital projects. We respond to public information requests…I also spend a lot of my time working with you…and the reduction [of those posts] would affect the whole organization.”
In the end, there wasn’t much left in Priola’s plan to impress his fellow commissioners like Pam Thompson, who was the top vote getter in last year’s election, where Priola had placed third in a six-way race for a trio of available seats.
WITHOUT STAFF, PEOPLE AREN’T SERVED
“I appreciate that you ran on cutting taxes [she told Priola] and it looks great on paper. But is it going to be effective for the people who live in this county?. . . ..If you’re not going to have the right amount of staff, you’re not going to serve the people who pay for it.”
– County commissioner Pam Thompson
“I appreciate that you ran on cutting taxes,” Thompson asserted, “and it looks great on paper. But is it going to be effective for the people who live in this county?…If you’re not going to have the right amount of staff, you’re not going to serve the people who pay for it.”
