Macon hikes property tax rate for capital needs

Board raises taxes for capital needs

BY JESSI STONE NEWS EDITOR

County Manager Derek Roland was tasked with delivering a flat budget for the 2021-22 budget year, but after countless hours of heated discussions, Macon County Commissioners approved increasing property taxes with a narrow majority.

With a 3-to-2 vote of approval, Macon

County’s property tax will increase from 37 cents per $100 of assessed value to 40 cents. The increase is estimated to bring in an additional $2 million in annual revenue. Commissioners Paul Higdon and Josh Young voted against the budget.

The $2 million gain will go toward providing a 2 percent cost-of-living raise for county employees ($400,000), $600,000 toward implementing the forthcoming recommendations of a pay study, increasing the Fontana Regional Library budget by $30,000 a year, a one-time investment for Nikwasi Initiative and a one-time $10,000 capital project at Cowee School. The remaining funds will be placed into the county’s contingency fund to make sure the county has enough funds to implement the pay study. If the money isn’t needed to increase pay for county positions, it will be put toward capital needs for the school system.

Higdon said he couldn’t support increasing property taxes.

“We gave Derek the charge to give us a flat budget and he does an excellent job and then we have all these personal wants — we’ve blown this budget all to pieces,” he said. “We need more in contingency because we can’t stay within a budget.”

On May 25, Roland presented the commissioners with a balanced budget of $54,641,096 that maintained the same millage rate as last year. The proposed budget increased 2.4 million — or 4.5 percent — over last year’s original budget and a 2.6 percent increase over the 2019-20 budget. The county’s fund balance also increased by 2.5 million, bringing the county’s total savings account to about $27.6 million, representing about 51 percent of the county’s annual expenses.

“Every local government across North Carolina saw a fund balance increase in 2021 because of the influx of COVID funding and because we braced for the worst last year and thank God we got the best,” Roland said.

He was referring to the unexpected increase in revenue streams — Macon received $1.56 million from the CARES Act for pandemic-related expenses — but the county also saw a huge increase to its sales tax revenue during the pandemic. Overall, the county saw a 19 percent increase in sales tax revenue, bringing in $10.5 million.

GROWING EXPENSES

Though the increase in revenue is great news, Roland said the county has also been hit by a number of expenditure increases as well as a long list of capital needs. For the first year in many years, the county’s health insurance premiums will remain flat, but the state is requiring another increase to county contributions to the retirement plan that will cost Macon an additional $196,000.

The county is also expecting the results of a pay study to increase its budget by more than $1 million to bring county employee pay up to current market levels in order to improve recruitment and retention.

“As the economy improves, wages increase and so does the competition to recruit and retain employees,” Roland said. “As of May 12, we had 50 vacant positions, and a majority of those are in priority areas providing critical services — seven vacancies in public health, 11 in department of social services, seven in EMS, one in telecommunications and 12 in the sheriff’s department. The compensation and classification study will help us to design a marketable pay structure.”

The public safety budget will increase by $800,000 this year for a total of about $15 million to cover the cost of a new ambulance, a new animal control crate, a new generator, new dash cams for sheriff patrol cars and another $55,000 to cover the increasing costs of housing Macon County inmates at other jails because of capacity issues.

Public transportation’s budget will increase by $33,520 for a total of $1.5 million to cover the cost of a multi-year facility expansion project. Health and Human Services budget is about $13 million and includes funds this year to purchase two new vehicles. The recreation department will see a $200,000 increase to its budget ($2.8 million) for a new vehicle and a joint capital improvement project with the town of Highlands to improve the lighting at the ballfield for $127,500.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS NEEDS

The Macon County Schools budget request each year usually takes up the most discussion among the commissioners. Once again, Roland presented commissioners with a budget that kept Macon County Schools at the same funding levels for operational costs and capital projects even though the schools requested additional funding that would allow them to restore and expand its art and music programs at the elementary and middle school levels.

Overall, Roland recommended $10.3 million for the school system — $8.2 million for operating expenses, $80,000 for water and sewer fees, $532,590 for teacher supplements and $1.15 million for capital outlay.

Since the school system is expecting to see at least 34 fewer students in the upcoming school year, Roland said the county’s contributions would be an increase in the per-pupil funding. At current levels, the county is contributing $1,961 per student.

Not reflected in the schools’ budget is a $350,000 health department grant that will allow it to continue the school nurse program. The grant is paying to have five nurses in the schools — representing a 1 to 898 student/nurse ratio.

Roland also pointed to two pieces of proposed legislation in the House of Representatives that if approved, would place a nurse in every public school across the state, which is why he did not include the schools’ request for five more nurses within the county budget.

The schools’ budget also doesn’t reflect the $650,000 worth of funding in the sheriff’s budget to make sure Macon County has a school resource officer in each school.

Roland also didn’t include the schools’ request for an additional 10 mental health professionals, which would have cost $820,000, because he said the state planned to spend $1 million to expand the existing tele-health program in schools to help students who are struggling.

Lastly, Roland did not include additional operating funding that would allow the school system to hire more art and music teachers — something that community members have spoken in favor of over the last couple of months during budget talks.

School Superintendent Dr. Chris Baldwin recently explained to commissioners how important art and music were going to be in improving student academics and also their mental health coming out of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

“We have to address their social and emotional needs before we can address the academic losses,” he said. “You’ve heard how important the arts are to our community.”

Commissioners have argued that it is the state’s responsibility to fund teacher positions and it’s up to the school board to determine how it will prioritize its operational budget. However, Baldwin explained to the board that the state’s class size mandate for kindergarten through third grade has eaten up any additional funding for the last few years during the gradual implementation. To meet the new class size limits, Macon has had to hire 15 new teachers across the district.

While Baldwin is hopeful that the school system will be able to use some COVID relief funds to hire more mental health professionals and add more art and music classes, those proposals have to be approved through the federal grant process. The schools’ applications are currently still pending. Also, that funding will eventually go away and the schools will have to figure out how to continue to fund those positions or lose them all over again.

Commissioners have also spent hours discussing how to proceed with the need for a new Franklin High School. A plan has been presented to rebuild a new facility on the current campus at an estimated cost of $88 million. While the board approved moving forward with plans for the replacement, Higdon was opposed without more discussion and public input. He suggested a referendum, but Commissioner Ronnie Beale said any referendum was likely to fail even though the school needs to be replaced.

“If the referendum fails, then what, we wait another 50 years?” Beale asked.

“If that’s what the people want, Ronnie, give it to them,” Higdon replied.

A public hearing regarding the budget was held at 6 p.m. June 8 (after press time). It is unknown whether the board will vote on the budget following public comment or if they’ll take more time to discuss. A balanced budget must be adopted by the end of June.

BY HANNAH MCLEOD STAFF WRITER

The North Carolina Association of Educators’ “We Heart Public Schools Tour’’ stopped in Haywood County Friday. The tour visited every county in North Carolina, finishing in the western portion of the state last week.

“We did this primarily because we wanted to honor and recognize the incredible effort that our educators and students and parents have done this past year,” said NCAE President Tamika Walker Kelly.

It was an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of public school teachers, especially during the trying times of the Coronavirus Pandemic, boost morale and bolster support for NCAE. The tour made one of its final stops in Canton at BearWaters Brewing Friday afternoon.

“Part of it has been, really, to help strengthen the relationship between the statewide and the county level organizations and to help support growth on the county level. It’s been great. We’ve had lots of people join us on this journey. We’ve had a lot of folks be curious about stepping into greater leadership roles,” said Leslie Abbott, NCAE associate member and integral part of the tour organization.

NCAE works to provide general support for public school educators and advocates for public schools in state and local government. During the tour throughout the state NCAE worked to collect signatures for state and local petitions regarding funding for public schools. In Haywood County that included competitive pay to keep teachers in local schools; a nurse in each school; access for students to social and emotional support from counselors, psychologists and social

workers; and safe, clean modern spaces for learning.

Tara O’Laughlin is Haywood’s NCAE president. She has been teaching art at Waynesville Middle School for 18 years. She first came to North Carolina because of how innovative the state was with education. Over her 18 years here, she says, she has seen the decline in North Carolina Schools.

“I have definitely seen firsthand what happens when schools are defunded,” she said.

The Coronavirus Pandemic shone a light on the importance of public schools to a functioning community, as well as the stark

funding shortfalls in some places.

“This year the world saw what educators already knew,” O’Laughlin said. “Public schools are underfunded, yet they’re expected to play a vital part in creating a healthy community. During this pandemic, Haywood County educators rose to the challenge.”

According to O’Laughlin, Waynesville Middle School has two counselors serving over 800 students. The American School Counselors Association, as well as the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, recommend that ratio be one to 250.

She said there are several other concerns within the Haywood County School system — lack of high-speed internet, getting connections to families, getting printed copies of school work out when and where necessary, the general over-stress of teachers — but that the mental health of students is her biggest concern.

“The thing that I’ve seen the most has just been the mental health needs and not having the facilities to be able to meet that where it’s at,” said O’Laughlin.

Macon County NCAE President John deVille is also worried about students’ mental health and how it will affect their willingness and ability to participate in summer school programs necessary to make up for the learning loss from COVID-19.

“Right before the pandemic hit, we did a mental health survey and we had here at the high school, close to a thousand kids,” said deVille. “We had over a hundred kids with serious issues. They had ideated suicide, they engaged in self-harm. We had struggled with trying to get a lot of them on campus for the past 15 months or F

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. —William Wordsworth, 1798

In the US, over 50 billion plastic bottles are used a year. Eighty percent of them (40 billion) end up in landfills. By 2050 ? only 29 years from now ? the oceans will be filled with more plastic than fish. Whether this catastrophe happens depends on each of us.

Tuesday night, May 12, Dargan Gilmore, the co-founder of Toward Zero Waste, made a compelling case for making small changes to reap big benefits for the future of today’s children. Toward Zero Waste (TZW) is a Raleigh, North Carolina, volunteer organization encouraging people to buy more sustainably, throw away less, and re-use more of what they have. The TZW focus is homes and local communities.

Gilmore showed many practical changes that she and her young family have made in their Cary, North Carolina, home and neighborhood. One major project was turning their lawn into a wildflower garden with raised beds for growing food. To fertilize them, the Gilmores used compost they made themselves. She told the group, “The regeneration of soil is the task of our generation.” of trash. The Gilmores were surprised that their biggest throwaway was paper towels. Second was food.

Find ways to reduce what goes into your local landfill. The resources below and other articles in this Triple-win Climate Solutions column have suggestions.

Waste Not, Want Not

HERE ARE A FEW:

• Schedule a composting class for your church or other group. Homemade compost enriches the soil, helps to sequester carbon, and keeps methane-emitting materials out of landfills. • Avoid buying plastics when glass or metal is an option. Repurpose and reuse. • Take your own mesh produce bags to the grocery for unpackaged fresh produce. • Got more than you can eat? Almost any food can be frozen for enjoyable eating later: bread, cooked onions and other vegetables; milk, pancake batter, soups and stews…. • For group events, don’t buy plastic and paper. Instead, ask everyone to bring their own household cutlery, plates, glasses, and cups.

It’s easy to make a grab-and-go bag. • For gifts, focus on quality over quantity, experiences over stuff. Give a tubing trip or tickets to an event instead of things.

TO SUPPORT THE NECESSARY REGULATIONS AND LAWS FOR MITIGATING THE DAMAGE FROM HUMAN AND INDUSTRIAL WASTE:

• Call or write your Representative in the NC

General Assembly to support House Bill 1119 on restaurant and related businesses’ donations of safe food for human consumption. • Call or write NC General Assembly Senator Corbin to support a Senate copy of House Bill 230. This bill will put necessary curbs on polluting waste. It will bring money into counties to help reduce the plastic going into landfills.

TRIPLE-WINS:

1) Feel proud to be reducing the damage to our climate. 2) You and those you love can become healthier as well as wealthier. 3)Your home and community can be more healthful and beautiful.

RESOURCES:

• Three video tutorials on composting for First

United Methodist Church, Waynesville, by

Sara Martin, farmer and biologist, who runs

Sustainabillies LLC with husband Dustin Cornelison, near Canton. fumcwaynesville.com/events/creation-care-minist ries The tutorials are a project of the church’s

Creation Care Ministries. • “Composting: A Recipe for Success” by Laura

Armour. www.themountaineer.com/life/home_and_gar den/composting-a-recipe-for-success/article_cecc96f2-9328-11eb-8b122352956f6901.html • “Composting.” State regulations and guidelines. deq.nc.gov/about/divisions/waste-management/solid-waste-section/composting • PBS documentary “The Plastic Wars” • Films: Kiss the Ground • Books: Zero Waste Home and Drawdown

Toward Zero Waste, Raleigh, NC: https://towardzerowaste.org/zero-waste-blog/ • A May 12, 2021, report on chemical companies’ lying to the FDA over decades about the dangers of plastic packaging: www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/12/che mical-giants-hid-dangers-pfas-foreverchemicals-food-packaging-dupont Mary Jane Curry, a retired teacher, is a cofounder of the WNC Climate Action Coalition and a Climate Reality Leader.