Council adopts $61.4 million budget in 5-1 vote
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on June 6, 2018 5:50 AM
The Goldsboro City Council voted 5-1 in favor of its fiscal 2018-19 budget that holds the line on property taxes and fees and slashes the council's health care supplement.
The council took less than 10 minutes during its Monday meeting to adopt the $61.4 million spending plan, which is $2.1 million more than the city's 2017-18 budget.
The city property tax rate remains at 65 cents per $100 in property valuation. No increases are planned for water, sewer and garbage service.
Mayor Chuck Allen and Councilmen Mark Stevens, Bill Broadaway, David Ham and Gene Aycock voted in favor of the budget, while Councilman Bevan Foster cast the lone dissenting vote. Councilman Antonio Williams did not attend the meeting due to a death in his family.
Allen applauded Finance Director Kaye Scott and her staff, along with the rest of the city staff and members of the council for their work on the budget. He said that changes can be made to funding as the situation in the city changes.
"I think we have a good budget," he said. "I want the audience and our citizens to know that this is a budget. If there are things that come up during the year where we need to change things, we can do that. But this is just our road map, and I do appreciate everybody's hard work on getting us where we are tonight, and we'll see where the year goes."
Included in the budget are a 1 percent cost-of-living increase, and the opportunity for employees to receive a 1 percent pay increase based on performance. City employees will also receive a 1 percent increase, to 4 percent, in the city's 401(k) contribution.
The budget includes $10,000 in funding for the Boys and Girls Club of Wayne County and Rebuilding Broken Places along with $5,000 for the HGDC Community Crisis Center. The Arts Council of Wayne County and Wayne County Library will have their funding cut by $5,000 each. A proposed $5,000 reduction to the Wayne County Museum was reversed during the budget process.
The council also decided, during budget deliberations, to cut its own health benefit supplement, a total cost savings of $42,924 to the city.
At Monday's meeting, Foster said he knew going in that the budget would likely be approved, but decided to vote against it for several reasons.
"It wasn't one thing," Foster said. "It was several things. So, I decided the best thing for me to do was to vote against it. I pretty much figured it would get approved, which is fine, but hopefully we'll still find money to do other things."
Foster said that he would like to see the council place a priority on addressing poverty in Goldsboro moving forward. He also said he hopes the council can find money to put toward teacher salary supplements in the city, which the city would legally be able to do under the newly adopted state budget, if Gov. Roy Cooper does not veto it.
The budget is set to go into effect on July 1.