THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210498
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY DAVE MCCARTER, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: NAGS HEAD LENGTH: 76 lines
With a swiftness belying the hours and days spent wrangling and crunching numbers, an operating budget for fiscal 1996-97 has been approved in short order by the Nags Head Board of Commissioners.
The $8.38 million budget that goes into effect July 1 was unanimously adopted Wednesday night with one minor alteration and no hemming and hawing.
Commissioners said the budget would continue to meet the growing service needs of the town, provide municipal employees with a 3 percent cost-of-living pay increase, and do it all with no increase in the property tax rate for Nags Head residents.
``This ordinance represents more than six months of hard work,'' said Commissioner Robert Muller, who made the motion to approve the budget. ``We all should tip our hats to the town staff for the effort they put into this.''
That work included some administrative juggling and figure-massaging in order to keep the town's property tax rate at 34.8 cents per $100 of assessed value. Initial numbers in early budget meetings had the board staring at a possible tax hike of seven-tenths of a cent.
``We were able to slightly increase some revenue projections and do a little trimming,'' said Mayor Renee Cahoon. ``We're very happy with the budget we adopted here this evening.''
Town Manager J. Webb Fuller said, ``We feel very comfortable with what we ended up with.''
The only change came when Muller asked that the board make a small transfer of funding to the sanitation line item to allow the town to continue to provide two Dumpsters for recyclable materials behind the Soundings Factory Stores. Apparently, board members and Soundings discovered at the 11th hour that the town would stop providing the Dumpsters in an effort to save on landfill tipping fees.
``I got a call from the manager at Soundings, and she was upset at losing the roll-offs (Dumpsters) on such short notice,'' said Muller. ``Those roll-off units collected 67 tons of cardboard that was hauled off to be recycled last year.''
Muller asked that the board transfer $3,000 from tipping fee expenditures to the sanitation department to keep the containers and asked that town staff monitor the costs with Soundings personnel. Based on a recent waste disposal bid in Southern Shores, Muller said, ``costs for maintaining the roll-off Dumpsters have gone down considerably.'' That meant discontinuing service might not even be cost-effective, said Muller.
With the slight revision, the motion to adopt the budget was seconded by Commissioner Douglas Remaley and approved without dissent. Remaley added that he wanted the commission to look closely, at its midyear budget assessment meeting, to see if an additional 2 percent pay increase might be found for town employees.
The town budget anticipates total tax revenues of $4.4 million in Nags Head for fiscal 1996-97, with an estimated $2.5 million of that from property taxes. Local option sales tax is expected to generate $586,000; occupancy taxes, $850,000.
Total general fund revenues and expenditures total just over $6 million in the new budget. Water fund revenues and expenses are estimated at $1.9 million.
The board discussed, at length, the issue of how to administer the merit pay system for town employees.
Recent policy has seen the town allocate enough money to provide 2.5 percent merit pay increases for 50 percent of Nags Head employees. Fuller said he believed that all deserving town employees had received a merit pay increase since the program's inception four years ago, but Remaley and Commissioner George Farah III expressed concern that town workers perceive that the administration views only half of them as deserving merit pay.
``We all are in agreement that more than half of our town employees are above average and deserving of merit pay,'' said Remaley. ``Saying up front that only enough money is there for 50 percent of them to get merit pay makes them feel like they've been cut off at the knees.''
Muller and Fuller agreed that using the 50 percent figure for budgeting purposes might have left a negative impression on some employees. However, Muller added that budgeting enough funds to make merit pay possible for 100 percent of town workers might make good press, but would not necessarily be good financial management.
The board agreed to revisit the issue at next month's meeting. by CNB