Beaufort County is in good placement to propose a 2017-18 budget that will not require a tax hike for property owners in the county.

“What we made a commitment to do was to make a budget that did not require a tax increase — it’s a flat budget — while still maintaining all of the services the county continues to provide,” said county Manager Brian Alligood.

The first round of budget submissions from county department heads comes in at 1 percent, a little more than $500,000, above the current fiscal year’s starting budget of $56.7 million.

“That’s not bad for our first round,” Alligood said.

The budget allows for the continuation of existing services, as well as new EMS service the county will be providing to the Old Ford and Clark’s Neck area, which had been approved by the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners.

Alligood said each department has done its part to keep expenses down.

“I think the good things are we’ve asked our staff to go back and look hard at their budgets,” he said. “We talked early on and said, ‘Look, we’ve got to be flat.’”

County finance staff will be seeking ways to whittle the numbers even more before presenting a budget to commissioners in a special called meeting on May 15. While it may seem like a simple thing to trim fat off a budget, there are other factors at play, Alligood said.

“When people say, ‘Well, you just need to cut some stuff’ — OK, what are those things that counties can cut? What is it that we do, and what is it that we can cut?” Alligood asked.

Many don’t realize that the county is mandated by the state to pay for services, he said. At any time, state legislators may require counties to assume services previously funded and/or operated by the state, or decrease funding for other services, an example of which would be the drastic decrease in counties’ allotment of North Caroline Education Lottery funds. Beaufort County commissioners have joined in lobbying legislators to return the original payout of 40 percent to counties for their schools.

“A lot of that has to do with the General Assembly: the (North Carolina Association of County Commissioners) and the county commissioners are always playing defense because there’s always the chance where they’ll say, ‘Let the counties and cities pay for it,’” Alligood said.

“Local governments are creatures of the General Assembly, and we can only do what they expressly allow us to do,” he said. “Here’s a classic example: there’s a bill — and it’s probably going to move through — it’s a bill that will allow for property tax exemptions for disabled veterans, widows of emergency services folks who died in the line of duty. That’s a good thing. How can you argue with that? But it’s not taking it out of the state’s money; it’s county tax revenue. It’s easy to sit somewhere and give somebody else’s money away.

That’s why the association and county commissioners are constantly fighting to not have stuff taken away from us.”

 

Services the county must fund

There are 15 services the county is mandated to provide by state law: Board of Elections, Register of Deeds, Sheriff’s Office, court system, public health, Social Services, mental health, medical examiner, community college, EMS, emergency management, public schools, property assessment, building code enforcement and a jail.

 

Optional county services

Services for which the county provides, though not required by state law, are juvenile detention, Soil and Water Conservation, Cooperative Extension, libraries, solid waste, public transportation, fire/rescue, water, regulatory powers, parks and recreation, public housing, community and economic development and land regulation.

 

The methods by which the county provides these services range from county departments with county employees, such as the Beaufort County Health Department, water department and emergency management; to budgeting funds to support services, such as the BHM Regional Library and parks and recreation programs in several county municipalities; to collecting service district taxes and administering them to service providers, such as volunteer fire/rescue squads throughout the county; to simply having county representation on a board, such as the Mideast Housing Authority board.

Alligood said, looking at the first round of budgeting submissions, that he’s confident commissioners will be able to pass next year’s budget without resorting to a tax increase, though there are a few factors at large.

“As always, with all of our budgets, there’s still a lot of unknowns. We don’t have final revenue numbers yet, and we won’t get them until next week,” Alligood said. “It’s a challenge, but we’ve got lots of really good folks who work with us. I have yet to meet anyone in local government who’s not trying to do the best for people.”