As the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold, families across Buncombe County are having kitchen-table discussions about how to make their household budgets work with less money coming in. A similar process took place at the Board of Commissioners pre-meeting on April 21 for the county government’s fiscal year 2021 budget, which according to April 7 first-pass projections faced a more than $22 million gap between revenues and expenditures.
Budget Director Jennifer Barnette walked the commissioners through a series of items that county staff members now hoped to omit from next year’s spending plan. “The upcoming fiscal year presents us with unique challenges, which is not new to any of us, and around a significant reduction to the available revenues rather than revenue growth,” she said. During an April 7 work session, she estimated that county sales taxes alone would come in nearly $3.5 million less for fiscal 2021 than for the current year, with most other sources of revenue also expected to decline.
The spending reductions Barnette presented totaled about $1.5 million — less than 7% of the estimated budget gap — in areas ranging from the Buncombe County Detention Center to information technology. The single biggest item to come out of the budget was nearly $458,000 for the design of the Woodfin Greenway and Blueway’s Riverside Drive portion; in January, commissioners allocated $500,000 toward that project to cover part of what Josh O’Conner, the county’s director of recreation services, called “cost escalation due to project engagement delays.”
Barnette said that the remaining tab for the greenway design might be picked up by the French Broad River Metropolitan Planning Organization, which will likely decide whether to fund the project in May. If the MPO does not provide the money, commission Chair Brownie Newman said he’d lean on the town of Woodfin to chip in “so it’s not 100% on our shoulders.”
Other savings included about $350,000 in delayed IT projects, such as $82,000 for a new internal audit management tool, $55,000 to replace security cameras and $30,000 for better management of public records requests. Several upgrades to county parks, such as $125,000 for the Owen Park Playground and $40,000 for an accessible boat launch at Lake Julian, would also be put on hold.
Even as the commissioners considered these cuts, however, they also discussed supporting nearly $300,000 out of $3.5 million in discretionary projects that had not been included in the first-pass budget. Among those expenses were a $104,000 subsidy for Asheville paratransit services, $75,000 to allow in-person visitation at the county jail, $65,000 for playgrounds at intermediate and elementary schools and $50,000 to issue debt that would fund solar energy installations on county buildings.
Although the commissioners were generally in favor of each of those expenses, Newman emphasized that the budget would remain a work in progress well through June. According to state law, the county must pass a balanced budget before the start of the next fiscal year on Wednesday, July 1.
“This is likely a process of, unfortunately, paring down,” Newman said regarding the discretionary spending. “I don’t hear anyone making a strong case that it gets the axe today, but it doesn’t mean that anything’s getting approved yet either.”
For anyone who has spent anytime in the business world this “first pass” is embarrassing. 1.5mm of 22 mm?
I could close the gap in twenty minutes.
When’s Asheville going to address the city budget reality?
And behind the scenes…the tax department is in the process of re-evaluating the county tax values….during a stagnant economy and projected recession…expecting the taxpayers to pay more…..all after continued and ongoing revelations of the misuse and embezzlement of tax payer’s monies from previous year with no significant evidence that their self-evaluating checks and balances are actually doing anything….