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BIG CITY: Here’s how the funds’ll flow

Posted on November 23, 2011November 23, 2011 by Staff

By Kirk Ross
In the end, the vote wasn’t even close. With almost every elected official in the county behind it and only a few skeptics (like me) voicing their worries, voters in Orange County passed a referendum allowing for a quarter-cent sales tax to be levied, with 10,749 voting for and 6,965 voting against, or roughly a 61-39 percent split.

The upside to the county is pretty clear, with a new source of revenue estimated at $2.5 million annually.

Whether you were fer it or again’ it, there’s a strong interest in the next steps in the process, including when the funds will flow and how they’ll be spent.

The next steps in the process are fairly straightforward, according to assistant county manager Michael Talbert, who said the board of county commissioners is scheduled to adopt a resolution committing to the funding plans for the tax receipts at their Dec. 5 meeting. They’ll also send on a formal request for the tax to be levied to the N.C. Department of Revenue.

According to Talbert, it takes about three months to set up the tax, so collections will likely start on April 1. The county should see its first receipts from the tax about 45 days after that, and will be getting the money along with its monthly disbursements from the Department of Revenue after that.

Meanwhile, the recipients of the tax money – the county’s school systems and economic-development planners – are working out their logistics.

The schools’ plans were spelled out in lists of priorities targeting repair and refurbishment projects and technology adopted by the districts over the summer. The two school systems will share half of the tax money, based on the number of students in each system.

The other half of the tax money will go mainly toward infrastructure improvements to the county’s economic-development districts, with the first focus of infrastructure spending aimed at the Buckhorn-Efland area. Talbert said the county wants to improve each district, with the priority on the ones with the most potential for attracting businesses.

According to the county’s plans, that works out roughly west to east, starting in the Mebane/Buckhorn/Efland economic-development districts and working toward the Hillsborough and Eno districts.

The other main goal out of the box will be to expand the Efland sewer system out to areas promised when the system was set up 20 years ago. That will take the pressure off ratepayers and the county, which have been faced with shouldering the costs of a truncated system.

As for monitoring the use of the funds, Talbert said the county is setting up a tracking system. The tax revenues will go into a Special Revenue Fund and not co-mingle with other county revenues. The county is also setting up a section on its website showing where the money is going.

There is some fallout to deal with in the win. The decision to run the referendum during the mainly municipal election cycle left some voters in the unincorporated areas rankled.

But after reviewing the election results, I’d suggest taking those complaints with a little grain of salt.

For starters, that logic only applies to the residents outside the towns in the Orange County school district. There was an election for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board, whose district covers a fair number of voters in the southern unincorporated areas.

Turnout numbers posted in the northern precincts were lower than normal, but not all that different from a typical primary year. At Orange Grove, a bellwether precinct with a spectacular view of the rolling hills of Dairyland, 508 voters, or about 15.5 percent of those registered, showed up to vote. The Orange Grove vote split 55 to 45 against – a lot closer than the Cheeks precinct directly north, which posted a turnout under 9 percent and voted overwhelmingly against.

You might be tempted to see a north-south divide in the results, but if anything it’s a rural-urban divide, since Hillsborough voters approved the tax. And given the circumstances, it’s probably not a good idea to play Rorschach test with the maps.

Regardless, it would be hard to make the case that the tax would have been defeated with higher turnout, since the increased number of voters would have not been exclusively in anti-tax areas.

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