Robbinsville – Graham County residents and property owners may face higher taxes and service fees, unless county leaders figure out how to close a $1 million gap between costs and revenues.
The county must have its 2022-23 budget finalized by the end of the month.
Graham County commissioners have been meeting each Friday to hear and discuss updates. Another meeting is planned for 9 a.m. Friday at the Graham County Community Center (196 Knight Street).
County Finance Officer Becky Garland has been steering the discussions, going over the county’s complex spending plan line by line “looking for over-budgeted expenditures and under-budgeted revenues.”
At the start of Friday’s meeting, Garland asked to address the board not as its finance officer, but as a citizen. She said the state is looking at a $6.7 billion surplus and is looking at tax cuts.
But at the same time, the state is forcing counties to provide services on its behalf while providing partial or no funding to pay for those services, leaving lawmakers at the county level to look at local tax increases. She called it “a major flaw in state government.”
This sore spot was exposed by Graham County Schools. The state required Graham County Schools to increase pay for some faculty without funding increased costs for benefits, and no funding at all for pay increases for staff and the rest of the faculty.
As a result, Graham County Schools was forced to increase its request for county funding from $1 million to $1.5 million.
“What happens to the school system happens to the county,” Garland said. “What happens to the county happens to its citizens.”
Ultimately, people of low and moderate income are disproportionately affected by increases in taxes and fees, she said.
“I urge every citizen to reach out to their state representatives. No more unfunded state mandates,” she said.
Garland has had many sleepless nights going through the upcoming budget, one of the most difficult she has faced in her career, and admitted that she has “been kind of grouchy about it.”
“We’ve never had a deficit this large,” she said.
“I’m not a happy girl this morning,” Garland told the Board of Commissioners on Friday. She said if counties are considered arms of state government, “then state government has to start treating us as part of them and provide the funding.”
Although the budget gap was at $1 million on Friday, it was still an improvement over the previous week by some $150,000.
But that means county commissioners may not be able to honor the school district’s entire request for $1.5 million, and were looking at $1.27 million with a commitment for annual increases of 7 1/2 percent (about $95,000) moving forward.
“We don’t want to put the school district into a bind,” Garland said.
Commissioner Dale Wiggins agreed.
“Our school system should not lack for anything,” he said.
Graham County Schools was not the only budget headache for the county. It faces challenges of its own, from providing living wages for county workers, to paying for overdue maintenance and equipment replacements.
Ideas to close the deficit include a new public safety fee, a tax increase, increases in all county-service fees, and closing outlying garbage drop-off sites in favor on a centralized location.