There was no lively sales pitch when Alamance County’s manager presented her latest spending plan to the county’s board of commissioners this week.
Instead, county manager Heidi York struck a distinctly dispirited tone as she slogged through the $229.7 million in outlays that she has proposed for the county’s general fund – a 2-percent increase from the current year that comes with an accompanying property tax hike of 1.59 cents, or nearly 3.4 percent, for every $100 of property value.
“I have to say that this budget is going to make no one happy. No one wants to raise taxes; that’s clear. . . and it’s not easy to cut services. It’s not easy to cut positions. It’s not easy to cut employee pay. But this budget does all of those things.”
– County manager Heidi York
York went on to declare that her proposed budget offers plenty of reasons to grumble even for those who have no qualms about this prospective tax increase.
“I have to say that this budget is going to make no one happy,” she said as she laid out her recommendations on Monday. “No one wants to raise taxes; that’s clear. . . and it’s not easy to cut services. It’s not easy to cut positions. It’s not easy to cut employee pay. But this budget does all of those things.”
The view from 30,000 feet
In the broad scheme of things, York’s proposed budget may not appear radically different from the one that the board of commissioners approved in the spring of 2024.
As in previous years, payroll expenses comprise the lion’s share of her general fund recommendations – with $94.9 million, or roughly 41 percent, of its $229.7 million in outlays earmarked for personnel. Notwithstanding York’s allusions to cuts in positions and pay, this figure represents an increase of about $5.9 million over the county’s current payroll expenditures.
Meanwhile, another $82 million or so has been proposed for public education – of which, nearly $72 million is slated to go to the Alamance-Burlington school system.
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
For THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE LOCAL NEWS, there’s only one place to look – each week in print and every day online: The Alamance News and alamancenews.com. Subscribe now. $50 for one year; $89 for two years.
On the other side of the ledger, York expects about $118.3 million of the general fund’s revenues to come from property taxes – with each cent on the property tax rate expected to bring about $2,652,787 into the county’s coffers. The county manager also anticipates about $45.6 million to come from the county’s sales tax receipts – a decrease of roughly $368,300 from the current year’s estimate. York expects this loss to be more than offset by $6.5 million in additional property tax proceeds – with about two thirds of the increase coming from her proposed rate hike from 46.9 to 48.49 cents for every $100 of property value.
This bird’s eye’s view of the proposed budget nevertheless obscures a number of factors that York said have weighed heavily on her as she prepared her recommendations for the commissioners.
“We’re seeing slower sales tax growth, rising costs in vehicles, construction, and ecommerce, as well as potential impacts from tariffs, and possible recession on the horizon. All of these put pressure on the county’s finances…and while our population is growing, growth in our tax base is not keeping pace.”
– County manager Heidi York
The county manager acknowledged that her efforts were made inordinately more difficult by nearly $2.7 million in so-called “state mandated increases,” which include higher set-asides for employee pensions. She also alluded to some heightened anxiety about the county’s savings, which the commissioners have previously decided should include enough spendable cash to cover at least 20 percent of the general fund’s outlays.
York conceded she that the county’s most recent audit had revealed that these “unassigned” funds had dropped to 19.8 percent of the general fund’s outlays. As a result, she has penciled in a relatively modest $2.9 million from the general fund’s savings to balance her recommended budget – as opposed to the nearly $8.7 million that was earmarked for this purpose a year ago.
The county manager added that all these financial headaches have only been amplified by economic uncertainty and recent developments at the federal level.
“We’re seeing slower sales tax growth, rising costs in vehicles, construction, and ecommerce, as well as potential impacts from tariffs, and possible recession on the horizon,” she elaborated. “All of these put pressure on the county’s finances…and while our population is growing, growth in our tax base is not keeping pace.”
Tax so soon
Another, arguably even more pressing concern for the county manager has been the desire of the county’s governing board to avoid any increase in the property tax rate.
“Services are important to our community. There’s more to Alamance County than the tax rate, and as we struggle to recruit and retain employees, a budget like this sets us back.”
– County manager Heidi York
The county manager recalled that, during their annual budget retreat in February, the commissioners had identified a hold-the-line tax rate as their foremost priority for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1. Last year, a bare three-person majority of the all-Republican board had agreed to raise the rate by 3.66 cents despite a similar consensus in the opening months of 2024. Since then, one of the commissioners who supported that hike has been elected to a district court judgeship, leaving the board’s current lineup more vocal than ever in their opposition to an increase in property taxes.
York assured the commissioners that she didn’t act lightly when she decided to recommend a 1.59-cent increase in the property tax rate in spite of the board’s recent consensus. The county manager said that she found this increase less onerous than the “$4.4 million in service cuts” that a hold-the-line tax rate would’ve required.
“Services are important to our community,” she stressed. “There’s more to Alamance County than the tax rate, and as we struggle to recruit and retain employees, a budget like this sets us back.”
York said that, in addition to her proposed property tax increase, she has received requests for hikes in several of the special levies that property owners in the county’s 12 rural fire districts pay on top of their county property tax. She went on to enumerate proposed increases that have come in from the Altamahaw-Ossipee, E.M. Holt, Faucette, Northeast Alamance, and Snow Camp districts. York didn’t mention a sixth request that Elon’s town council tendered last week for a 1.35-cent increase in the 8.65-cent tax that residents on the periphery of Elon’s town limits pay to support the town’s fire department.
A tax-neutral alternative
The county manager said that her tax hike would cost the average homeowner with a residence valued at $265,200 an extra $52.80 a year. She added that, in the event the commissioners are loath to impose this added expense on the public, she has sketched out an alternative scenario that would rely on spending reductions to maintain the county’s current levy on property.
York said that this rival proposal would target three basic areas for the cuts needed to lower the general fund’s budget by $4.4 million. About $1.3 million of this sum would come from closing the library system’s branches in Graham, Mebane, and Burlington’s North Park, leaving only May Memorial in downtown Burlington to serve the system’s patrons. These closures would also eliminate the equivalent of 17.6 full-time positions. York said that another $648,000 could by clawed back by laying off an additional 12 or 13 staff members from “non-mandated” services such as recreation and parks, information technology, the county manager’s office, veterans services, and the county’s family justice center. Meanwhile, York said that reduced compensation for remaining staff members could reduce outlays by another $2.4 million.
“This would be in addition to the numerous cuts I already included in the recommended budget,” the county manager added as she lamented the long-term effects of the austerity measures she is grudgingly proposing. “I’ve spent the past two years here trying to create an organizational culture where employees feel valued, supported, and appreciated. These strategies have destroyed those efforts.”
Cut it out
The county manager stressed that she isn’t recommending the kind of “deep” cuts that would allow the county to maintain the current property tax rate. She nevertheless shared other cuts that she has endorsed to both departmental spending requests and the county’s existing outlays.
York said that she is calling for several organization-wide austerity measures, such as an 11 percent cut in copier and printer use, a 15 percent rollback in funds for uniform replacement, and an across-the-board moratorium on the longevity bonuses – the latter of which is expected to save $570,000 in the coming year. York also proposes to recoup $543,000 by freezing vacant positions in areas outside of public safety and hang on to another $773,000 by reversing a recent board decision to pay out holiday compensation that the county “banks” on behalf of emergency services workers when they’re scheduled to work on these organizational days off.
York acknowledged that she still plans to move forward with the third and final round of pay grade revisions that emerged from a staff-wide salary study that took place a few years ago. Nor does she intend to touch the staff’s traditional merit-based raise, which averages out to about 2.5 percent across the county’s payroll. Even so, York said she has decided to pare back the staff’s usual “cost of living adjustment” from 3 to 2 percent in the coming year.
The county manager went on to admit that she has decided to include three new positions in her proposed budget. These include an additional dentist at the county’s dental clinic, which would be covered by the clinic’s fees, as well as a human services position funded by the county’s share of a national class action settlement with companies that make and distribute opioid drugs. A third post for a second assistant county attorney in the county’s legal department would come out of the general fund.
In the meantime, York pointed to three positions that are slated for elimination in the proposed budget. These include vacant slots for a fire inspector and a social services staff member as well as a post in York’s own office that will open up with the forthcoming retirement of assistant county manager Bruce Walker. Moreover, she said she’s reduced the bottom line by another $3.1 million by gambling on continued vacancies in turnover-heavy areas like social services, EMS, the health department, and the county jail.
The county manager also confessed that she has gone back and reduced some of her recommendations in a capital improvement budget that she shared with the commissioner’s earlier this spring. These tweaks include the removal of $650,000 in upgrades to a county-owned ballfield at Altamahaw-Ossipee Elementary School and $965,618 in proposed replacements to the county’s motorfleet other than ambulances and a grant-subsidized truck for emergency management.
Other so-called cuts in the manager’s budget target the external agencies and programs that receive funds from the county. These reductions include $525,000 to the annual allocations for the Alamance Rescue Squad, the Burlington-Alamance Airport, Family Abuse Services, and Crossroads, a local victims’ advocacy group. York added that she has held the line on the county’s contribution to Alamance Community College, while her recommendation for the Alamance-Burlington school system is more difficult to decipher.
All told, the county manager has set aside $71,950,670 for the school system’s facilities, its operations, and the repayment of debt that the county has incurred on the school system’s behalf. This total includes $41,975,151 that’s slated specifically for operational needs – or roughly $17 million short of the $59,047,151 that the school board has requested. This discrepancy is all but guaranteed to put the county on a collision course with the school system’s supporters, who were out in full force when the commissioners convened their regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday.
In any event, the county manager was adamant that she has submitted the best possible budget that she could conceive under the constraints she currently faces.
“This recommended budget strikes a balance between competing priorities,” she insisted. “Difficult decisions were made as we struggled to provide high quality services, recruit and retain a high performing workforce, maintain aging facilities, adjust to increasing costs, and improve efficiencies in county government – all while trying to minimize the burden on our taxpayers.
“Commissioners,” the county manager added, “you have some tough work ahead.”
