In split vote, Town Board agrees to one-cent property tax increase
June 7. A divided Cornelius Town Board approved a one-cent property tax increase as part of a $28.3 million spending plan with an additional $4.8 million in federal American Rescue Plan funds coming from the federal government.
The budget was adopted by a 3-2 margin, and the new tax rate will go into effect July 1.
A penny increase in property taxes will cost taxpayers an additional $45 a year on a property assessed at $450,000.
Details
The new tax rate will increase to 0.232 per $100 tax value and will be the first town property tax increase in Cornelius since 2018.
Town taxes account for approximately 25-30 percent of a typical property tax bill, funding vital services provided by the town, including police, fire, parks/recreation, public works, and planning.
The remainder of a homeowner’s tax bill consists of county taxes which help fund other important services, including public schools, the county assessors department, fire marshal, health department and social services. The county tax rate for next year has not yet been finalized.
Supporting the budget and tax increase were commissioners Colin Furcht, Michael Osborne and Todd Sansbury. “The longer we wait to pay for our much-needed projects, the more expensive it’s going to get,” Osborne said.
Taking an opposite view, Commissioner Denis Bilodeau urged the board to reject the tax hike. “The town has saved $15 million over the past four years and placed it in a savings account earning less than one percent interest. Given the environment we face now, I don’t feel this is the time to increase taxes.” Also voting against the budget was Commissioner Dave Gilroy.
Photo by Jason Benavides
Personnel costs
The approved budget includes a 3.5 percent merit pool for salary increases plus another 2.5 percent cost of living increase. About 75 percent of the town’s expenses are driven by costs in public safety areas such as the police, fire and telecommunication 911 departments.
Personnel expenses have risen in these areas in order to retain employees as well as transitioning the fire department to a full time operation
The American Rescue Funds are being provided to municipalities across the country, designed to help them address unplanned and unusual expenses which arose during the height of the COVID pandemic.
5 Comments
Comments are closed.
Our Partners
It’s $33.2M in planned spending next year, a 28% increase over this year. Can we please get basic facts right in local media?
I tried hard to get behind this Town Budget, and I’m in favor of significant raises for police and fire, but ultimately the proposed FY22 Budget was a bridge too far due to massive across-the-board increases in government spending. I was focused on 3 key #s in the end:
1. 28% – the increase in Total Town Expenditures for next year
2. 22% – the increase in Recurring Personnel Spending for next year (largely financed through 1-time federal free money)
3. 71% – the percentage of Cornelius citizens who “Agree” or “Strongly Agree” with the view that town spending increases should be managed over time to be less than or equal to our population growth plus inflation (per our Budget Survey with several hundred recent respondents).”
Mayor Washam responds:
To establish actual budget facts, the increase is due to personnel costs, such as hiring additional full-time Firefighters in order to provide adequate fire & rescue services to our community and increasing salaries for Police Officers & our 911 Telecommunicators so that they are paid competitive wages compared to other agencies that would like to hire our staff. Public Safety accounts for 75% of the personnel cost increases and approx. 40% of the operating cost increases.
ARP funds are being used to supplant public safety salaries; however, $3.9M of the ARP-supplanted funds are being used for one-time expenditures, such as repairing Legion Park’s baseball field, designing the Jetton Rd. Extension reconstruction, and participating in Smithville infrastructure improvements. When you subtract these one-time expenditures that are ultimately being funded with one-time ARP funds, the budget-to-budget increase in expenditures is 11.8%.
Of the citizens who have responded so far to the survey, almost two-thirds (64%) said they were more concerned about maintaining & expanding essential and quality public services (Police, Fire, transportation, parks and recreation, etc.) than they were with a tax increase. Listening to the citizens has been a critical part of this budget cycle.
That’s the way it should be!
Mayor Woody Washam
Town of Cornelius
20031 Chapel Point Lane
Cornelius
– So let me understand this…. “The town has saved $15 million over the past four years and placed it in a savings account” & you still feel the need for more?
– With over $30 million in that saving account. 1\3rd of the total amount needed for EVERY infrastructure request…… & you still need more?
– 71% – the percentage of Cornelius citizens who “Agree” or “Strongly Agree” with the view that town spending increases should be managed over time to be less than or equal to our population growth plus inflation (per our Budget Survey with several hundred recent respondents).” …..& you still need more?
– the 1 penny increase is less than $750,000 total….you could not find a way to defer $750,000 worth of expenses in a $33 million dollar budget, So instead…… you still need more
yuck – uugg
Thought we just voted these similar minded persons out?
I totally disagree with any tax hike in these times. The community and our small businesses are struggling enough.