Graham’s city council, which has eyed a 3-cent property tax increase all spring, ended up being divided over the final budget with that level of taxation, narrowly passing the city manager’s recommended budget on a 3-2 vote.
Voting in favor were city council members Bobby Chin, Ricky Hall, and Bonnie Whitaker. Opposed were mayor Chelsea Dickey and councilman Jim Young.
Neither Dickey nor Young had previously voiced their opposition to the budget, or its tax increase, although in an interview after the meeting, Young said he had told city manager Megan Garner that he would not be able to support the increase.
Publicly, Young said he couldn’t support “raising taxes right now.”
In an interview after the meeting, Young elaborated that “It just didn’t feel right” to vote for a tax increase under the current economic conditions.
For her part, Dickey appeared to veer into the negative column based not on the budget or the tax rate per se, but rather due to the fee schedule, which was also considered and adopted as part of the city’s budget.
The only two speakers during a state-mandated public hearing prior to the adoption of the budget were two local developers who argued that the “roughly doubling” of water and sewer fees “singled out new home construction,” according to Mtende Roll of Roll Construction.
Roll asked that the council consider a phased increase rather than implementing the higher fees, which she said more than doubled the current rates, all at once.
A similar plea was made by Nathan Binger of Binger Construction.
Dickey’s overtures to the council to consider such a phased approach got no traction.
“Graham is always behind,” said council member Bonnie Whitaker. “We’ve been incrementally increasing fees over the past few years.” Whitaker said she did not think the higher fees would cause any slowdown in construction.
The city’s consultant, Colin Beck with Hazen and Sawyer, which had studied the city’s fees structure and recommended the higher fees, attended the meeting to explain the basis for the increases, at the city manager’s request.
Mayor pro tem Ricky Hall said the city had been “kicking the can down the road” by not raising its development fees and urged that the city proceed with the increases.
With regard to her vote, Dickey said she felt a “gradiated schedule” would have been preferred, and so she voted against the motion that included the budget, pay schedules, and fees.
Dickey also said that while the fee hits developers, “costs will be passed along to homeowners.”
