Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:31:43 -0400
From: Voller Mayor
Subject: Town of Pittsboro passes its FY2012-2013 budget
June 25, 2012
The Town of Pittsboro passed a budget that will continue to invest in its citizens, business community, employees, infrastructure, downtown and future.
The Town Board started planning for the budget with its retreat in January and began the process in earnest two months ago. The Board held a public hearing, and hosted several budget sessions at Town Hall with staff over the past two months to analyze all aspects of the budget, discuss and debate budget requests, and evaluate benchmarking data for various aspects of Town Government including the governing board, water and sewer rates, and real property tax rates.
After considerable deliberation, collegial discussion, input from the public and the Town Manager and staff the Town Board by a 3-2 vote decided to make the tough decision and move the tax rates back to where they were in 2008.
The increase was included in the manager’s recommended budget and supported by the finance officer. The decision is a reversal of the one cent tax decrease in 2008 as well as the four cent decrease that occurred in 2009 when the Town Board elected to go levy neutral as opposed to revenue neutral with its tax rate.
The past decreases that were adopted in the past few years were in part an attempt by the Town Board to reconcile the Town’s budget with the challenges presented by the nationwide recession that began in 2008. These decisions created an effective mill rate of 0.302 per $100.00 of assessed value.
The new rate will be 0.3673 per $100.00 of assessed value, which is still lower than Pittsboro’s historic tax rates. (For example, ten years ago the Town of Pittsboro tax rate was 0.43 per $100.00 of assessed property value.)
Effectively, this means property owners will be asked to invest via real property taxes approximately $63.00 more per year for every $100,000.00 of assessed value.
In essence this means that a property owner will pay approximately $126 more per year for a $200,000.00 home or about $2.42 more per week.
For this investment the citizens and property owners will receive a Town prepared to grow, with a staff in place to handle new challenges, such as the Jordan Lake Rules, and funds committed to replacing the old waterline on Hillsboro Street, investments in our Downtown “Main Street District”, additional improvements at the water plant, the waste water treatment plant, training for the Police Department, support for the Chatham County Historic Society, beautiful parks, and other improvements that enhance the value proposition of Pittsboro.
And over time these investments are paying off. New businesses are opening in Town, the water plant has had eleven consecutive quarters of excellent results, the waste water plant is producing reuse quality water and selling it to 3M, the ABC Board is making a healthy profit and has distributed over $30,000.00 back to the Town, the Police Department has slowed its turnover to a trickle, the roads are safer, the town is safer, and Pittsboro has been recognized for its Community Police work and public works is are keeping the rights-of-way clean and paving roads. Additionally, the staff at Town Hall are working hard to assist citizens and the Town has hired a bilingual staff person to work at the front desk.
What this shows is a Town Board committed to building on its past investments and successes and making Pittsboro a great place to live, recreate, attend school, work and own a business.
We believe this year’s budget is a good starting point for continuing to improve and better Pittsboro.
We are open for business and new ideas. Visit us today and live here tomorrow.
Best Regards,
Mayor Randy Voller
919-949-1274