Why don’t we talk more about revenue?

GOVERNMENT

By Terri Buckner
Guest Columnist

Revenues are the amount of money coming into an account, it’s the gross income on your financial spreadsheet. For local governments, revenue sources include taxes (personal, residential and commercial property, sales, excise), grants or donations, fees for services like building permits, and transfers from state and federal government.

I’ve attended multiple public hearings with the county and the town of Carrboro since April and while there is a great deal of talk about the expenses faced by our local governments and how residential property taxes need to be raised to cover those expenses, there has been exactly zero talk about how to increase other revenue sources.

As a retiree, I know that a fixed revenue source (income) is limiting. I can control my expenses, but unless I decide to go back to work or the stock market makes a big turnaround, my choices for increasing income are static. But that’s not the case with our local governments. Both the county and the town of Carrboro have economic development offices and neither of those offices have played any public role in the current budget discussions. What needs to be done to increase sales tax? What are our economic development offices doing to bring new commercial business into the county and town?

At a time when staff and elected officials are all anticipating further cuts to state and federal transfers for education, transit, and social safety net services, shouldn’t raising revenues be a top priority?

At the county level, we have had three economic development zones (Buckhorn, Hillsborough, Eno) lined up around today’s I-40 corridor since 1981. We have a candy factory and soccer fields in Buckhorn, UNC Hospitals in Hillsborough (doesn’t pay taxes), and some minor retail in Eno. None of the three districts have dependable water and sewer service so expansion is unlikely or so expensive that new businesses will need to negotiate local tax breaks like Morinaga did. After 40+ years, shouldn’t we have invested in water and sewer in those areas if we expect to increase our revenue generating options?

The county also has the Visitor’s Bureau tasked with bringing in more tourism (sales taxes). But both the county and the town are showing no increases in sales tax revenue for the next year. Why?

The town of Carrboro has hired a consultant to plan out how to close East Weaver Street to make it a pedestrian-bike mall, but those discussions haven’t touched on any economic benefit. Same for the Downtown Area Plan. I’ve sat through two presentations on that plan as a member of the Planning Board, where we’ve seen proposals about where to site new development and the kind of architecture that might blend in best for each of the 4 selected sites. But no mention of the economic development benefits (or costs) that would come with the plan.

So despite all the hand wringing and angst over how unaffordable our community has become, we aren’t spending any visible, public time focusing on how to raise revenues to reduce dependence on residential property taxes. Why?

Terri Buckner is a long-time Orange County resident. She served 2 1/2 terms on the OWASA Board of Directors and is currently the ETJ representative on the Carrboro Planning Board. Her local issues substack, Panoramic Orange, can be found at https://terribuckner.substack.com/.