5% Water Rate Increase on Tap for Charlotte, North Carolina (CharlotteObserver)

May.12, 2009 in Water Rates

(May 12, 2009, The Charlotte Observer)

City Manager Curt Walton recommended a $1.87 billion budget Monday that includes an increase in water rates but not property taxes.

Water users will see $2.37 a month added to the average $45.92 water bill – a 5.2 percent increase.

Walton’s proposed budget puts more money toward street resurfacing, but freezes employee salaries. It includes $1.3 million to prepare for a big change to the city’s recycling program, but cuts money for a number of nonprofit organizations – including community development corporations that have come under scrutiny in recent months.

“We believe we’ve been successful in not damaging city services,” Walton said Monday.

City residents will have a chance to weigh in on the proposal at a public hearing May 26. The City Council is scheduled to adopt a fiscal 2010 budget June 8.

In a bit of a gamble on federal stimulus money, Walton’s recommended budget puts no money toward the new police officers requested by police Chief Rodney Monroe.

The city is waiting to hear whether it will receive enough federal stimulus money to hire 150 officers over the next three years. In anticipation of that grant, Walton has earmarked $2.8 million in the city’s capital reserves to pay for equipping 150 officers.

But a stimulus funding decision will not come until September, and Mayor Pro Tem Susan Burgess worried that the city might be left without a chance to boost its police force.

“That seems to be the community’s number one priority,” she said. “We need to have some plan to get caught up.”

The budget recommendation also denies a number of other requests – for crime analysts, telecommunicators and electronic monitoring bracelets – that Monroe made earlier this year. Walton said some of those may be covered by separate stimulus applications.

Budget Director Ruffin Hall said the largest impact to city services would come in street maintenance and land development areas, where a significant number of vacant positions have been frozen.

Though sales tax revenues decreased by 10 percent, property tax income inched up and the city gained some income through annexation. But without the annexation and other changes in money-flow, the city’s $495.4 million general fund budget represents a decline, something Walton said was a first.

“We’ve never had a budget recommended to you that’s actually lower in dollars than the one recommended to you last June,” he said.

Hall said, however, that the city benefitted from Walton’s decision to restrict spending on travel and hiring in October, and about $6.5 million of those cuts will carry forward into the fiscal 2010 budget.

(Original Article Here)