Game On: If Greensboro has an $11.2 million budget deficit, did some 2009 City Council candidates intentionally mislead the electorate?

Everybody sooner or later

sits down to a banquet of consequences.

 

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

City faces $11.2 million budget deficit

 

… the bad news is that they’ll have to give something up — bond projects, city services or something else — to close an estimated $11.2 million budget deficit.

 

To put it bluntly, it could get ugly, City Manager Rashad Young told council members Tuesday.

 

City Council members got a taste of the city’s financial situation Tuesday afternoon in the first budget session of the season. [GH: The candidates and the press knew during 2009’s City Council Election}

 

So far, next year’s budget has a gaping hole in it — caused in part by a drop in expected sales tax receipts.

 

The next fiscal year, which begins July 1, already has some major new expenses, including the opening of the new Gateway Gardens and the Vandalia Fire Station.

 

And then there is the mother lode of expenses: debt payments for $96 million worth of bond projects that the city staff estimates would add 2 1/4 cents to the city’s tax rate.

 

That kind of tax-rate change would increase the property tax bill on a $180,000 home by $45.

 

The bond projects include $23.9 million worth of 2000 bonds that will expire this year if the city does not use them, more than a dozen road projects and $12 million for the new aquatics center.

 

Last year, the City Council agreed to start many of those projects quickly to take advantage of low recession construction prices.

 

This year the council faces having to scale back those projects or else figure out how to fund them.

 

Raising property taxes was not an option, the seven council members at Tuesday’s budget briefing said. [GH: Which is what they said last year, which increased this year’s deficit.]

 

“I haven’t heard anyone talk about a tax increase,” Mayor Bill Knight said.

 

Council members asked Young to plan to keep the tax rate flat next year and scale back the number of bond projects so they won't have to adopt a tax increase. [How many 2009 City Council candidates promised what constituencies votes on bonds they knew Greensboro couldn’t afford?]

 

They also asked the manager to provide a menu of potential cuts to help balance the budget.

 

…Some council members said they didn’t want to cut city services or have to lay people off.

 

“That is the point of discussion,” Young said. “We can’t have all of that.”

 

Amanda Lehmert

Greensboro News and Record, January 25, 2010