PILOT MOUNTAIN — While Surry County is working to make budget cuts, worrying about what happen in the next fiscal year, Pilot Mountain has already approved a plan to keep things relatively the same.
The budget approved by the Pilot Mountain Board of Commissioners this week will keep the property tax rate at 57 cents per $100 of valued property.
In 2018-19, Pilot collected $782,600 in property tax revenue. With a boost in tax base, plus some back-owed taxes, Town Manager Michael Boaz had budgeted just shy of $845,000 in the current fiscal year.
Boaz said he dropped his expectation on property tax collections for next year by 1%, which would be more than $8,000.
Surry County planned its budget figuring a loss of sales tax revenue of 12%. Boaz went a little more conservatively at 14% less than this year. In the current budget Boaz has budgeted almost $470,000 in sales tax. At 14% less, that would be about $404,000, or $66,000 less.
Without an increase in property tax or garbage fees, how will the town make up the difference?
For one thing, in this current year, the commissioners made a one-time $20,000 contribution to the Armfield Civic & Recreation Center to help purchase new playground equipment. That amount won’t be in the next budget.
Secondly, the ABC store has been seeing growing sales and profits. In the current year, profit distribution is up about $50,000. While that level may not continue, Boaz is estimating that for a whole year it will be up $90,000.
Other than that, Boaz recommended to the board no salary increases at this time and no new full-time personnel; however, he did budget some money for part-time work to assist in code enforcement.
The town is buying one more police car, but those payments won’t hit in this budget cycle, he said. This will finalize the plan to have one car per full-time officer so that people aren’t trying to share a vehicle. The town bought two cars last year as part of this plan.
The town manager said there would be a slight increase in the water and sewer rates, although he did not give exact figures.
There are a lot of capital projects that have either started or are about to start, he noted, so the town needs to slowly raise the cost of providing the services so that water/sewer can pay for itself like an independent entity should.
The projects include the $4 million water project that will go to bid in August, $2.5 million sewer improvements project that is under contract and will start shortly, and $1.2 million for work on the wastewater treatment plant.
The commissioners had just one budget workshop before this week’s regularly scheduled meeting. They discussed the document shortly before voting their approval.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com