Mount Olive’s draft budget includes an 8-cent tax hike, as well as water, sewer and garbage rate increases. A public hearing on the budget will be held at 3 p.m. Friday, June 14, at Mount Olive Town Hall, 114 E. James St. The town board can adopt the budget at any time following the hearing. (Steve Herring|mountolivetribune.com)
Mount Olive’s property tax rate would increase by 8 cents per $100 of value should the town board adopt its draft budget for fiscal year 2024-25 as currently written.
The $6.5 million budget proposal, that was unveiled at the board’s June 3 session, also includes a 3 percent hike in water/sewer rates — the second increase in as many years — and a $3 increase ($19 to $22) in garbage rates.
The public will have the opportunity to comment on and ask questions about the proposal during a public hearing that will be held at 3 p.m. Friday, June 14, at town hall, 114 E. James St. The board may adopt the budget anytime following the public hearing. State law requires approval by the end of the month.
If approved as is, the tax rate would increase from 67 cents to 75 cents per $100 of value.
The increase would generate about $220,000 in additional revenue, Town Manager Jammie Royall said.
For property valued at $100,000, the increase would mean an extra $80 in town property taxes, he noted.
The need for the increase is simple — rising costs, Royall said.
“Everything has gone up, everything has gone up,” he stressed. “Now just looking at before COVID what stuff was and now. The last backhoe we purchased was 2014/15.
“We paid about $85,000 for it. That same backhoe today is $125,000. I mean everything has just gone up. I know the last time everybody was talking about a raise (for town employees). This (tax increase) isn’t for a raise.”
The water/sewer rate increase is being driven by the state which has told the town the rates are not where they need to be, Royall said.
Not charging what it should for water/sewer could endanger the town’s prospects for grant funding, he added.
“See if you were charging what you are supposed to be charging, then you’ll have money to do what you have to do to keep your system up,” Royall explained. “We just haven’t been charging what we needed to to keep our system up because we had been getting the grant money.
“If we don’t start doing it (sufficient rates), and that is what we had to stress to commissioners, and the commissioners know that if we don’t start doing that then we probably won’t get another grant.”
And, like the current budget, the proposal does not include salary increases for town employees, but does provide each employee with a $1,500 net bonus.
The bonuses will be paid around October by utilizing American Rescue funding.
The only possible raise is the board toying with the idea to give Fire Chief Greg Wiggins a little more money since he making less than other department heads, Royall said.
The proposal would increase Wiggins’ salary from $54,000 to $76,000, he added. as well as filling some vacant slots, including adding another firefighter, Royall said.
The need for more paid firefighters is there because of the increasing difficulty in finding volunteer firefighters, he said.
The budget also looks to fill the vacancy created by former utilities director Jeremy King who left to take another job.There also are two vacancies in sewer collection, one in water distribution and two public works to be filled.
The budget provides for leasing a backhoe, but no major equipment purchases are planned, Royall said.
The proposal continues to provide $5,000 for the Mount Olive Area Chamber. That funding had been questioned during the board’s initial budget session in April.Also questioned at that time was $36,000 the town funds for public transportation provided by the Goldsboro-Wayne Transportation Authority.The proposal reduces the funding to $26,000 since the level of service has changed, Royall explained.
The town will continue its efforts to get out from under a state-imposed sewer moratorium “that is killing us,” he said.
However, grants, and not local money, are funding the work.That includes federal grants of $8 million for correcting inflow and infiltration where rain and groundwater enter the sewer system and $6 million to address problems at the sewer treatment plant.
“We will also be working on $1 million in earmark money from the state emergency fund,” Royall said. “We are going to use that to fund water meters. Every month we have got to go do rereads because sometimes — we have the drive-by system — it doesn’t calculate (remotely read the meter).
“It is just so much extra work. So we are putting in new meters. This system is a much better system. We think our water services are down because it doesn’t pick up (the correct reading) a lot of times. This will get us a more accurate reading.”
For some the more accurate readings could mean a higher water bill, while for others it could mean a lower bill since the system has not been reading as it should have, he said.
“We think it is in the best interest of the town and the residents to upgrade,” Royall added.
