Forsyth County staff propose budget with slight tax increase (2024)

Residents of Forsyth County could see a 45-cent increase in the county’s tax rate if the board of commissioners approves the $581 million staff-recommended 2024-25 budget, which is the final recommended budget of the retiring County Manager Dudley Watts.

The proposed budget has an increase of $11,401,829, or 2%, from last year’s budget.

County staff note in the budget that the 45-cent increase in the county’s tax rate is the result of slight growth in the property tax base.

The change would increase the rate from 68.23 cents per $100 in property value from the current rate of 67.78 cents.

The new rate would cost the owner of a property valued at $150,000 an amount of $1,023.45 in property taxes to the county.

Watts told commissioners Thursday that the recommended budget is meant to signal a return to normalcy after the county government has received years of extra federal funding related to the pandemic, while anticipating an economic recession that never came.

“If I had to characterize it,” Watts said, “it is a hold the line budget that maintains service levels and it really is a kind of return to normalcy. Unless there are crazy economic things that occur [next year], this is how local government grows from a revenue side.”

No county commissioner raised any strong objections to the proposed budget during their meeting. However, after the meeting concluded, Commissioner Gloria Whisenhunt told the Journal that she wouldn’t support a property tax increase and that the commissioners would need to find a way to balance the budget without one.

Slight tax increase

The proposed budget is the first after three consecutive years of an unchanged property tax rate that includes a recommended tax increase.

“At the end of the day, we just could not see a way to balance it without impacting a service level,” Watts said.

Last year’s budget had an ample amount of revenue available for spending that precluded the need for a tax increase. Watts described the “historic growth in revenue” when unveiling last year’s recommended budget and citing the $1.8 million in revenue available to spend without calling for a tax increase.

This year, there’s a smaller amount of revenue growth, which shows itself in the proposed budget’s decrease in spending when compared to spending totals of past budgets.

There’s only a 2% increase in spending over this year’s budget compared to the two most recent county budgets, which have included annual spending increases around 6%.

Much of the decrease in spending reflects the loss of increased federal funding related to the pandemic.

Watts mentioned the effects of increased federal funding to commissioners and said that the county had a lot of significant one-time expenditures in recent years.

“We’ve had a lot of money that was one-time money,” Watts said. “We’ve had to try to figure out how to get that into the community without it bankrupting us down the line.”

Spending increases

The largest proposed spending increase is for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools which would receive $175.8 million if the budget is approved by commissioners.

That’s an increase of $6.7 million over the current fiscal year, which is far short of the school district’s $20 million request.

Commissioners Shai Woodbury and Tonya McDaniel said that they are both advocating for the $20 million request.

During the meeting, McDaniel asked about a potential budget formula that would meet the school district’s request and also expressed concern to the Journal that her constituency in District A wouldn’t be able to afford the suggested tax increase.

“I’m advocating for the $20 million ask but I’m wondering how we’re going to get there,” McDaniel said.

Woodbury said that she hopes constituents will bear with the board of commissioners as they attempt to put the county on a trajectory of eventually not having to pay high taxes for education.

“I would challenge us to think about the staff’s recommendation of an increase in taxes,” Woodbury said. “We want a system in which people have been so well educated that they don’t have to pay high taxes for education.”

The second largest increase in the proposed budget is for the Sheriff’s Office, which would receive an increase of $4.6 million.

According to the recommended budget, the driver of the increase in spending for the Sheriff’s Office is an increase in hourly pay for detention officers and deputies.

Since the commissioners decided to increase pay in September to address staffing shortages within the Sheriff’s Office, detention officer vacancies have dropped from 112 to 49 and deputy vacancies have dropped from 26 to 23, according to county staff.

Budget meetings

The rest of the public budget meetings will begin with a detailed presentation starting at 9 a.m. on June 6 in the county government center’s fourth floor multipurpose room.

A public hearing on the budget where residents can give their comments will be held at 6 p.m. on June 10 at the government center. Those wishing to give comments remotely should call 336-422-1200 at 5:45 p.m. on the day of the meeting. They will be placed on hold and recognized to speak in the order their calls were received.

Budget workshops will be held on June 11 and 12 starting at 9 a.m.

A special meeting, where the commissioners may possibly adopt the budget, will be held on June 13 at 2 p.m.

Meetings other than the presentation will be held in the commissioners meeting room on the fifth floor of the government center. They’ll be televised live and live streamed on the county commissioner’s website.