Mount Olive nixes tax hike

Mount Olive residents won’t see a hike in their property taxes in 2023-24 following a 4-1 vote by the town board Tuesday night. The adopted fiscal plan doesn’t allow for a salary hike for town employees but does include bonus pay.

The vote came on the heels of a public hearing on the budget, where only four people, including two town employees — three advocating for a property tax increase — spoke. The budget initially called for a 7-cent tax hike but that had been stripped away during a June 9 work session.

A fifth person spoke against any tax increase during the public forum held prior to the start of the Tuesday night, June 13, official budget hearing

During the nearly hour-long public hearing, three of the speakers said they didn’t want higher taxes, but argued that one is needed if the town is going to deliver the services its residents expect while providing a living wage to the employees.

Also stripped from the final approved budget was a 2.5 percent across-the-board salary increase for all town employees, replaced with a one-time $1,500 net bonus for each employee.

And as the board voted 4-1 to adopt the budget without the tax increase or pay hike, several of the town employees who were in attendance stormed out of the meeting.

Commissioner Barbara Kornegay’s motion to adopt the budget was seconded by Commissioner Tommy Brown.

Commissioner Delreese Simmons, who has championed the tax increase, cast the lone dissenting vote.

It took several minutes before anyone responded to Mayor Kenny Talton’s invitation to speak during the public hearing.

Up first was Mount Olive Fire Chief Greg Wiggins, who said he was speaking as a property owner.

“I would like to start out by saying that I am not interested in my taxes going up,” Wiggins stressed. “But I am also not interested in losing services.”

As a town employee, Wiggins said he would like to see a pay increase because prices have increased. The same is true for the four other paid firefighters, he added.

“But I also understand the same 2,500 people can’t pay all of the taxes in this town,” Wiggins continued. “We’ve got 4,500 residents, but all of them aren’t property owners. Probably about half of that are paying the taxes.

“You just can’t keep hitting that same group to pay for everything, but we have got to provide services.”

The town needs to figure out a way to be more efficient or just plain do with less, he said.

But where the fire department is concerned, volunteers cannot continue doing what they are doing — keeping up with the call volume and amount of training required, Wiggins said.

Without volunteers, the only choice would be to go to a paid staff, he said.

Earlier in the meeting Wiggins announced that the town’s fire insurance rating had improved — something that will result in lower insurance premiums.

That was made possible by the department’s volunteers, he said.

However, like other municipalities across the country, Mount Olive is experiencing problems in recruiting and retaining volunteers, and if the volunteers go away, so does the better rating and lower insurance premiums, he said.

The department currently has five paid firefighters to handle daytime calls, a request for a sixth and pay raises were cut from the budget, Wiggins added.

“I know we can’t keep beating up the same few who are paying property taxes, but if that’s not the way, then we have got to find a way to do the job more efficient — I don’t want to see anybody laid off either,” Wiggins continued.

“But we have got to figure out a way. We just can’t stop providing services. I don’t know what the answer is, but we have to find the answer, if not, we are going to start losing services. We are going to lose more police officers.”

Town Utilities Director Jeremy King said he has a Mount Olive address, but does not live in town, but that he has a lot of pride in the town.

Raising taxes is not always a good thing and really does not have anything to do with his department that is self sufficient, he said.

“But I do know that if we don’t raise taxes, these folks (town employees) sitting on the back wall, if we don’t do something for them — they’ve got children to feed,” he said.

“But if we can’t start taking care of our own, helping them — they are out here at 3 a.m. with water shooting in the air at 20 degrees at night so you can get water the next morning or flush your commode the next morning — we are going to be in a bind.”

King said he has had five to six people cut from his department in recent years and doesn’t know why.

“I am as short-handed as I can be,” he added. “We can’t hire anybody because there is no money there. We can’t even give a raise.”

A cost-of-living increase is not a raise, but is just trying to keep up with inflation, King said.

The taxes aren’t the worst thing in the world, he added.

“They aren’t good, but when we haven’t been raised up here year upon year upon year to amount to nothing — we can steadily put a small amount in there somewhere,” King said.

That helps keep employees from having to apply for welfare or to work two or three jobs to make ends meet for their children, he said.

“It is not fair,” King concluded.

Linda Boykin said she favored the tax increase even though she does not like to pay taxes.

“When you increase the taxes to those percentages, none of us are going to go hungry,” she said. “We have to have a way, if we want to keep adequate employees, if we want to keep adequate services, we have got to find a way to pay for it.”

Unless there is someone willing to come in and provide that money then the tax increase is “not going to kill us,” she added.

Her comments drew applause from the audience.

Danny King, founder of the nonprofit ADLA, had questions about the business tax structure and asked what businesses are doing to improve the town’s tax base.

King, who said he had not looked at the budget, suggested the town needed to build relationships with funding entities

He asked as well what creative ways the town could consider to leverage resources and find revenue to inject into funding streams.

“This (funding) problem is universal,” King said. “We have got to be creative in looking at ways to find revenue that can kind of take some of the burden off the homeowners and at the same time increase revenue.”

One of the town’s biggest challenges is the sewer moratorium that prevents it from adding sewer capacity, the mayor said.

The town is working to rehabilitate its wastewater treatment plant and to repair its underground sewer lines, too, he added.

Until that work is completed, the state is not going to allow the town more sewer flow, Talton said.

“We have people knocking at our doors, really knocking down our doors trying to get in to build houses, start new businesses,” he said.

Talton said he, board members and Town Manager Jammie Royall have been bombarded with calls asking when the moratorium will be lifted.

At present there is no firm answer, he said.

But if and when that time comes, and it will come, that will be an “elephant” off the town’s shoulders, Talton said.

“Then we will realize tax revenue and will see those coffers start to inflate because I believe that development is right there on our fringes,” he continued.

But for now, the town cannot allow any development that requires new sewer hookups, he said.

Ed Cromartie, a former town commissioner and former Wayne County commissioner, spoke against any tax increase during the public forum held prior to the budget hearing.

Cromartie said between the county and town, but especially the county, property taxes have been increased several times in recent years.

Also in the near future the county will conduct a property revaluation that could result in higher property values that, in turn, would mean higher taxes, Cromartie said.

The town needs to keep that in mind before increasing its tax rate, he said.

Cromartie said that as a result of the last revaluation his taxes went up by about $1,000.

The town’s budget proposal initially included a tax increase of 7 cents per $100 of property value. However, with the change agreed to during a Friday, June 9, budget work session, the property tax rate will remain at 67 cents per $100 of property value.

To help make up for the revenue the tax increase would have generated, the new budget increases the monthly garbage container fee from $18 to $19 starting with the July billing.

That increase will bring in an estimated $30,000 in revenue.

The budget will utilize just under $100,000 in American Rescue funds to cover the cost of the employee bonuses.

The bonus will be $1,500 net per employee and will be paid somewhere around August.

During the June 9 budget work session, town attorney Carroll Turner said the bonus would equal between a 3 to 5 percent pay increase.

Contributions to other agencies remain intact at $19,500.

However, the board did agree to cut the amount budgeted for the video camera surveillance system from $75,000 to $40,000.

The budget reflects a $30,133 surplus that will go into a contingency fund.