UPDATE: Not surprisingly the budget passed 5-1 with little discussion and with Commissioner Phillips being the lone vote in opposition. And as I wrote below, Huntersville appears to have taken a page out of the Nancy Pelosi school of governing since they voted on a budget on June 5 that had not been presented to the public beforehand.
There is a town board meeting tonight at 6:30pm – no pre-meeting is scheduled. You can view the agenda or download the full agenda packet here. You can watch a live stream of tonight’s meeting at the town’s Ustream page here. I can’t cover every agenda item – especially for tonight’s overly packed 297 page agenda – so I always encourage residents to review these agendas and discuss any items of interest with the mayor or a board member because even a single motivated resident can make a difference on how the votes turn out on some of these.
I’m not even going to try to address any of the other issues on tonight’s agenda because the most important item is adoption of the budget (and because I haven’t had time to sufficiently review the 297 page agenda packet that wasn’t even made available to the public until sometime mid-day last Thursday). The budget doesn’t have to be voted on until the end of June – why not just defer a budget vote until the June 19 meeting given how many other items are already up for discussion tonight so that the budget can receive the full attention of the board?
A few other random thoughts on the proposed FY 17/18 budget.
First, why is there no revised budget in the agenda packet? The town board and staff held a budget work session two weeks ago on May 22 and discussed changes to the interim town manager’s proposed budget. Does staff plan to just hand a hard copy of any revisions to the proposed budget to the board at the dais immediately before the meeting starts tonight? If so, why not make the same copy available online to the public prior to tonight’s meeting? I guess the board has to pass the budget before the public is allowed to know what’s in it…
Local government continues to grow unabated despite the election of a new, “fiscally conservative” town board in 2015. Total budget expenditures (including HFFA and Electricities funds) of $47.3 million in FY 12/13, $48.8 million in FY 13/14, $53 million in FY 14/15, $55.7 million in FY 15/16, $57.9 million in FY 16/17, and now just over $61 million recommended this year. If the board does vote on the budget tonight, I look forward to the mayor explaining to Huntersville taxpayers they have to wait just one more year for that reduction in the tax rate he pledged to work on this year…
$17.9 million estimated in last year’s budget for property tax revenues. The town has collected $18,245,815 YTD according to the proposed budget. What is the surplus revenue being used for?
Gotta love paying a $20 vehicle tax to the town every year to help do your part to generate another $1.6 million or so in revenue because paying taxes when you bought your vehicle and having to pay the DMV and the county ever year based on an inflated value of your vehicle isn’t bad enough.
Huntersville’s portion of county ABC revenues remains a paltry $95K. Davidson doesn’t even have an ABC store and yet they receive the same portion of ABC proceeds. What are the state legislators who represent the town doing to bring about a more equitable distribution of ABC revenues in Mecklenburg County?
Every single town department’s budget is up over last year’s adopted budget figures except Governing Body (costs associated with the mayor and town board) which is only down a mere $6,500.
Did you know your tax dollars are used to subsidize memberships for elected officials and town staff to HFFA? See that line item for “Other Contri(Fitness)” in every department’s budget except Legal, that is where the town budgets for a supplement for HFFA memberships. According to the town’s finance director, the town supplements employees and elected officials at the same rate, which is $312 per year. She explained it is considered a supplement because the employee/elected official is also required to contribute $120 per year for their individual membership. Elected officials currently taking advantage of a subsidized membership to HFFA are: Mayor Aneralla and Commissioners Bales, Boone, Guignard and Kidwell.
Even with all that help from taxpayers, HFFA joining fees AND membership fees are down again this year and it’s highly unlikely the facility will make up the gap in projected figures in the next three months going into summer. But hey, let’s continue to subsidize exercise in Huntersville because economic development, right?
Over $3.4 million budgeted for the Huntersville Fire Dept., Inc. and yet they don’t have to itemize their budget like every other department. That doesn’t seem very transparent. It’s interesting that the proposed budget only uses the term “volunteer” but not “paid” or “salaried” when referring to the Huntersville Fire Dept., Inc. since it is made up of both volunteer and paid firefighters.
HPD is asking for approx. $1 million more than their adopted budget last year, although the interim town manager is only recommending a mere half a million budget increase. And yet, as of March 13, 2017, HPD is sitting on $347,807.19 in equitable sharing funds received from both the DOJ and Treasury Department. When asked about these funds at the May 22 budget work session Chief Spruill said (paraphrasing) they were saving these funds for a big ticket item. HPD already purchased an armored vehicle without using these equitable sharing funds, what other big ticket item is HPD saving up for? Why are these funds not being used to offset some of the police budget this year? Can these funds be used to help stop the seemingly unending string of vehicle break-ins in Huntersville? Maybe the board’s public safety liaison, Commissioner Boone, can help answer these questions.
And in case you missed it, my thoughts on the Legal Dept. budget are here.
I’m already close to a thousand words so Parks and Rec gets off easy this time.
Eric