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County passes budget

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Staff

by Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

The Orange County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a $183 million budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year, including a 4.8-cent property tax rate increase.

The increase sets this year’s tax rate at 99.8 cents per $100 of property valuation, representing a 5 percent hike over the current 95-cent rate.

The commissioners also approved a 2.65-cent increase on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro special district tax, to 23 cents per $100 of property valuation.

Under the approved budget, for a $200,000 home the ad valorem tax would increase $96 to $1,996 and the special district tax would increase $53 to $460.

The commissioners last week made about $5.3 million in cuts from County Manager Laura Blackmon’s initially proposed budget, which included an 8.8-cent increase on the tax rate, to $1.038 per $100 of property valuation.

However, board members made a few changes to the reductions, including the restoration of two previously cut deputy positions and a volunteer coordinator for the county Health Department, balanced by changes made in the Sheriff’s Department and Health Department budgets.

About $660,000 of the savings came from a reduction in teacher pay increases due to new proposals by the state Legislature. Commissioners found additional saving by denying departments’ requests for new positions, implementing a three-month hiring freeze for vacant positions and delaying the opening of the West Ten Soccer Complex and Northern Park.

The fields at the Northern Park will open in April of next year, the West Ten Soccer Complex in August.

Overall, about 80 percent of the cuts came from county departments and about 20 percent from the schools’ budgets.
Board Chair Barry Jacobs said he would like to more actively advocate for the county throughout the budgeting process.

“Eighty percent of the cuts are out of the county budget and I suspect that part of that is because we don’t see the same level of angst and pain from our staff as we do from the school system,” Jacobs said.

Commissioner Mike Nelson said he would like to see more of the goals that the commissioners set at their annual retreat included in the budget next year.

“We never really had an opportunity to proactively influence, as a group, what got put in this budget,” he said.
Nelson added that he had “a great deal of discomfort” in voting for the budget because he had received it late Monday night and hadn’t had time to read all of the changes.

“We made some decisions that I know we feel badly about,” he said. “This is complicated stuff and it’s important.”

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