Annual Town Council Retreat ‘08…….

The new council has now had the opportunity to meet a few times, most importantly; the two day retreat has been completed. The agenda for this event can be found here . As you may see a lot of topics were covered, generating a considerable amount of discussion.

For the most part the meetings were orderly and informative. Presentations from both staff and the service contractor that spoke were well organized and thorough. This is especially important for the new council members so that they can “get up to speed” on the internal works of town operations and the issues being faced in the near future.

From these meetings both near and long term goals are established, and the Operations and Capital Improvement budgets are “roughed out” so that town staff can generate a first draft budget and project schedule. The first order of business was to establish the “theme “ of the next years’ budget. The Town Finance Officer sought guidance from council as to whether the budget draft should be service based or tax based. In other words, should she prepare a draft based on the cost of the services as provided in the past, or budget based on a set tax rate with services adjusted to match the rate?

Initial consensus seemed to be to produce a draft based on the tax rate. Comments from council members ranged from rolling the current ad-valorem tax rate (.0975 per $100) back to .08, to fully funding existing services as they had been. The prevailing compromise position was to produce two drafts, one at a .08 tax rate and the other at .085. As the matter was discussed further four of the council members modified their stance by indicating that they were seeking to produce a workable budget that reflected an effort to be fiscally responsible without eliminating any services, with the aim of producing a 10 % cut where possible. For his part, the Mayor has been quite consistent in his argument that the tax rate must be rolled back to at least .08, and that all services and department budgets must reflect that reduction.

Tax-wise, what would this mean to the property owners?

In round numbers, our current tax rate of .0975 produces $97.50 per year, per $100,000 of value. So, a .08 tax rate would produce a tax savings of $17.50 per year, per $100,000 of property value.

The math is simple if you want to calculate your own property tax liability. Go here to look up your property by address, determine the tax levy value, and do the math.

Example: My property:

Tax Levy Value: $355,500 divided by 100 = $3,550

Current Tax $3,550 X .0975 = $346.13 per year.

Reduction to a .08 rate would save me $62.13 a year. But what effect would that have on the services I receive? Refer to my previous post to see what the town structure is and what services you currently enjoy.

This brings me to a specific topic that I want to address next due to the immediacy of contract negotiations involved; the Ocean Rescue/ Lifeguard service.

Later I will report on other retreat discussions, further analysis and background on our ad-valorem taxes, and explore other matters that produce the unique issues that have to be dealt with in Southern Shores.