County Manager's proposed budget has neither tax increases or decreases | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    As is required by law, Beaufort County Manager Randell Woodruff delivered his annual budget message to the Board of Commissioners Monday (5-6-13) night. You can hear the presentation in the video below.

    We have just received the budget information and have therefore not had a chance to analyze it yet, but we will be reporting more details as the process proceeds. Bottom line, the Manager is not proposing either a tax/fee increase or a tax reduction.

    The budget proposal is to appropriate $54,183,411, which is a decrease in spending of $723,209 from 2013, "due to a number of one-time expenditure in FY 2013." New spending of $448,370 would be one-time expenditures and $1,024,318 is proposed in new spending that would be re-occurring each year. That would include and additional $250,000 for school current expense and $137,940 for additional capital outlay expenditures. Also included in the new spending is a proposed increase of $210,000 for raises for the county staff. Fund balance (the difference between what is budgeted and what is actually spent) is projected to grow to $14.2 million an increase of $1.4 million over last year.

    At the end of Mr. Woodruff's presentation the board sets a series of dates for budget workshop. Mark your calendars because we know many people will want to attend. For those who can't, we'll keep you posted.