Bypass may affect tax revenue
By Steve Herring
Published in News on June 10, 2016 1:46 PM
Wayne County's 2016-17 budget proposal reflects what County Manager George Wood calls a "significant" increase in sales taxes revenues. However, those revenue projections are scaled back somewhat because of uncertainty over how the new U.S. 70 Bypass will affect them, he said.
The North Carolina Association of County Commissioners had recommended counties plan for certain revenue levels, Wood said. But after meeting with his staff, Wood said the decision was made to lower the anticipated amount in the new budget by about 3 percent.
It is better to underestimate than overestimate revenues, he told Wayne County commissioners during their Tuesday session.
Wood made his comments after Commissioner Ray Mayo questioned how well the county would be able to weather another recession particularly in light of new debt for schools, a 911 call center and the Maxwell Regional Agricultural and Convention Center.
Mayo asked Wood if he had factored that into his financial calculations.
Sales taxes typically decline during a recession, but property taxes do not because it is a fixed tax base, Wood said.
"I will say this, one of the reasons that you are seeing that our sales taxes are coming in higher -- we project those pretty conservatively because I had rather come to you and say, I have underestimated, rather than come back and say we are not going to bring in what we thought," Wood said. "So we already have some cushion there.
"We monitor that (sales tax) monthly, so if we start seeing that drop, and we think it will impact us, we won't wait until the end of the year. We will come back and say we need to make some adjustments in the budget."
The highway will have some impact, but hopefully not what has been anticipated, Mayo said.
If it doesn't have an impact, then the county will be better off than planned, Wood said.
"The new road is going to be a giant step for eastern North Carolina as far as bringing in, hopefully, extra industry and also moving the freight that is existing now and hopefully for new companies," Commissioner Wayne Aycock said. "But I am concerned like Mr. Mayo. I can see it is possibly going to hurt our sales tax."
Aycock said he lives in northern Wayne County and drives along Claridge Nursery Road to get on the existing U.S. 70 just west of Goldsboro "quite a bit."
"(Last) Saturday morning I came to town for breakfast, and I was amazed at the difference in the amount of traffic on a Saturday morning coming in going eastbound," he said. "Now, westbound traffic was fairly heavy.
"But there was a significant difference in traffic in the eastbound lane where you pull up there to the light at McDonald's. Hopefully they are still spending money in Wayne County."
Commissioner Bill Pate said that the impact on sales tax has been a concern all along for the U.S. 70 Commission.
"But the folks in Johnston County told us that when theirs (Clayton U.S. 70 Bypass) came around it was a short-term loss for a couple of years," Pate said. "Then they actually saw it come back in growth. I certainly hope that is what happens with us."
"The other thing that I want to stress, too, is remember you are getting ready to break ground on the biggest tourism magnet that we are going to have which is the Maxwell Regional Agricultural and Convention Center," Wood said. "The city is getting ready to break ground on that multi-sports complex, and these soccer tournaments are big.
"A lot of family members come to them, particularly on weekends. In my view, that is additional money that we have not had before. A lot of the things we put on at the convention center will bring in outside people, not every event, but a number of them will."
Chairman Joe Daughtery said some people are concerned about a possible reduction in the sales tax revenues.
"We are trying to mitigate that," he said. "We have had Mr. (Tommy) Burns (assistant county manager) reach out to the DOT about posting of signs about gas ahead, actual logos for McDonald's or whatever, Wilber's, whomever may want to participate. We are trying to speed that up."
Billboards will be critical, too, as the county works to get people off of the bypass, Daughtery said.