The proposed Chatham County government budget for fiscal year 2020-2021 has left multiple county officials as “confident” as they say they can be, considering the circumstances the spending plan was created within.
The draft proposed budget of $132,335,610 — an increase of 5 percent from the current year’s budget — will receive a final vote on Monday from the Chatham County Board of Commissioners. The majority of the increase is in new expenses for Chatham County Schools and six new positions within county departments. Additionally, the county’s property tax rate will not be altered and remain at 67 cents per $100 of assessed value.
Board Chairman Karen Howard told the News + Record last week that she felt “confident that we have made good choices.”
“We have practiced some restraint in forgoing expansion as uncertainty around the ultimate fallout from the pandemic remains high,” she said, “but have adhered to our principles as is reflected in the funding of education, public safety and health and human services.”
It’s the relative lack of expansion that Howard, Commissioner Mike Dasher and County Manager Dan LaMontagne all said they wish could have been different. Howard said she would have liked to have funded more requested positions for the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, while LaMontagne and Dasher stated they would have liked to have seen pay raises for county staff.
“They do such an amazing job under normal circumstances, and I think under these much more difficult circumstances, they’ve really just shown themselves to be the great public servants that they are,” Dasher said. “To not be able to compensate them accordingly is disappointing, but hopefully we’ll get a chance to make it up to them.”
Since its original presentation in early May, LaMontagne said the plan has undergone “relatively minor shifts of funding,” with one other change made. The Moncure Fire Department had requested a 2-cent increase in the fire district property tax rate, which was denied. After further consideration, staff adjusted the budget plan to account for a 13.75-cent rate, a 1.25-cent increase.
Howard and Dasher each expressed approval of the plan’s use of funds raised by the passed referendum of the Article 46 sales tax option — the entirely will be directed to paying for teacher supplements.
“The idea behind that was expansion and being able to provide additional services, but certainly I’m glad that it’s there and it’s available,” Dasher said. “It would have been hard to find those funds anywhere else in the budget and would have led to some serious cuts elsewhere.”
Howard added, “We know all too well the difficulty of finding and keeping good staff in our public schools and this supplement goes a long way in demonstrating the district’s commitment to our teachers, students, staff and families, especially at a time when there is so much uncertainty around what the school year will look like and how we will have to adapt our classrooms, students and staff to meet this new normal.”
LaMontagne said the county will be “start(ing) slowly with spending” heading into the next fiscal year in the event an economic rebound is not quickly coming.
“I think we have done our best to estimate revenues and balance the budget without resorting to the use of the fund balance for operations or reducing staff as many other local governments are proposing this year,” he said. “While taking a conservative approach to the budget this year, we cannot be certain that it is conservative enough.”
The final vote will be taken during the commissioners meeting starting at 6 p.m. on Monday, and the 2020-2021 fiscal year starts July 1.
Reporter Zachary Horner can be reached at zhorner@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @ZachHornerCNR.