By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

The Lee County Board of Commissioners gave final approval Monday to a budget of $119 million that will maintain the property tax rate at 65 cents per $100 of valuation, turning back at the same time a series of last-minute appeals that reflected a rising tide of dissatisfaction with the way county tax dollars are being spent.

When the county budget is up for adoption every year in June, there are usually two or three people who speak out against some or all of it. On Monday, the number of unsatisfied speakers was 14, and all but three were there to say the way the next year’s county budget proposed to treat its public schools and the students it serves just wasn’t right.

Among these were the chair and vice chair of the Lee County Board of Education, and Lee County Schools’ superintendent.

The budget passed Monday is focused on supporting the increasing cost of continuing current programs and services at the same level they have been during the previous 12 months, the additional costs associated with the opening of two new expansive county facilities before the middle of next year, and maintaining the county’s present tax rate of 65 cents in an economy that has been characterized over the past two years by high inflation, slow growth, and a tight labor market.

The budget will also provide county employees with what the commissioners call a “meaningful wage increase,” along with a boost in the county’s commitment to invest further in education at Lee County Schools and Central Carolina Community College. But the budget contains only a handful of other expansion items.

These few increases would be funded through the continued growth of new property improvements, investment earnings, tapping into the county’s savings, and also utilizing those same savings to help with debt service.

All this would be accomplished by maintaining the county’s present tax rate of 65 cents. The total county budget for FY 2025-26 increases to $119,389,086, representing a 5.72 percent increase of $6,464,748 over the current fiscal year. It’s the third consecutive year that the total county budget has passed the $100 million mark.

The jury is still out

Developing a county budget has almost become a year-round project, and here’s the key driver: The county’s rate of population growth has been the 13th fastest in North Carolina since 2020. With 68,000 people living here in 2025, demographers predict that Lee County will have 75,000 residents by 2030, and 80,000 by 2035. Putting together programs and services for that many people requires the sort of rapid growth in county personnel that Lee County has seen over the past decade.

County Manager Lisa Minter had already kick-started her preparations for the coming new year’s budget well before the arrival of the first snowflakes last winter, asking each county department to develop and defend its budget requests. As these were compiled, it became clear there wouldn’t be enough projected revenue to meet the county’s expected needs, so she asked departments to reconsider their requests and submit revised ones.

As these revised estimates were reviewed and reassessed, the projected budget still lacked sufficient estimated revenue to meet the county’s overall spending targets. Minter continued to believe the planning behind her 2024-25 budget, which was finalized in the previous year, was sound. Her work last fall began with building a budget for the coming year that would have maintained essential county services at their current levels and expanded others where sufficient needs could be documented.

By the end of April, the budget development machine was nearly finished with its work. It would have proposed a 1.5 percent increase in the property tax rate, which would help sustain the arc of growth in the overall trajectory of county services. It seemed Minter’s model for county growth was continuing to chug down the tracks smoothly, like observers both inside and outside of county government might have predicted it would.

But suddenly, everything changed. All of Minter’s planning, preparation, and projections were abruptly reshuffled when the commissioners’ chairman, Republican Kirk Smith, asked Minter to come up with an alternate budget plan, one that neither increased nor decreased the property tax rate. However, the caveat would come in the form of a bitter pill, requiring that departments of county government would see no growth in their ability to serve the increasing number of citizens, and some departments would actually see a decrease in their capabilities to serve their clients.

Smith’s idea was to determine what the budget might look like if the tax rate could be locked in at the same level for one more year, while simultaneously keeping county expenditures at or below the current fiscal year’s 2024-25 level. It’s essentially a budget freeze, maintaining both expenses and revenues at the levels they were in the previous year. The last adjustment to the property tax rate was made in 2023, when an 8-cent rate cut was offset by an increase in property values, resulting in most taxpayers facing property tax increases of 50 percent or more. The advertised lower tax rate that had been promised turned out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Still, the 8-cent rate decrease allowed Smith and a few of his fellow commissioners to declare victory with a large rate cut, even as taxpayers saw significantly higher bills.

Unhappy campers galore

Smith’s patience was put to the test Monday, when one person after another stepped to the podium and spent their allotted three minutes having not a word of praise for the budget package he’d asked for. They came as parents and community leaders to call the commissioners out on their public statements in support of students and teachers, but noted that this support hadn’t translated into significant financial backing where and when it was most needed.

Among these was Alan Rummel, Republican vice chair of the Lee County Board of Education, who said he came as an individual, a taxpayer, and the father of two children attending county schools.

“I’m here to speak against the proposed county budget — not just on behalf of our schools, but on behalf of the very priorities this board claims to value,” he said. “For years, the message from many here has been the Board of Education must demonstrate performance before a meaningful increase in investment will be considered.”

Rummel highlighted 11 different actions the school board had taken within the past two years, calling them “serious, measurable steps forward.” He called on the commissioners to take steps in this budget to implement a step increase in the pay of the system’s classified employees, those not requiring a certification in order to be employed.

Rummel had spoken to the commissioners twice before to point out what he sees as opportunities to improve the system and that are being passed up in budget deliberations. This year, he didn’t pull any of his punches.

“We’re working hard to create a culture of excellence to attract and retain quality educators and staff. But culture alone won’t keep peoples’ lights on,” he said. “A positive work environment cannot make up for wages that don’t pay the bills. Employee morale is built on the foundation of a fair wage. Without that, even the best culture collapses. You were elected to set priorities and make tough decisions. But when a commissioner proposed a motion to identify potential budget cuts, not cut them but just identify options, the board voted it down. I really don’t understand that. That is literally your job.”

School Superintendent Dr. Chris Dossenbach stated that the increase of almost $840,000 in funding provided by the commissioners in the new year’s budget is not progress, but instead covers inflation and the increased costs of delivering instruction. He urged the commissioners to shift their focus from identifying a cause for the employees missing out on raises compared to their colleagues, and instead ask, “what are we going to do about it?”

Holding the line on property taxes was only half of the impact Smith’s directive would have on a budget development timeline for the year that begins on July 1. State law requires a public hearing on proposed county budgets before they’re adopted by local governing bodies, allowing citizens to review the county’s estimates of income versus its plan for spending tax dollars provided by the taxpayers. That’s a lot for most people to take in, assess, and formulate opinions on even when the timeline operates on its usual development cycle.

But for the new budget year that begins in just days, Smith’s request at literally the last minute for a second revenue and spending plan for the county based on different assumptions (keeping tax rates the same as last year and maintaining most county offices at current or reduced staffing levels) meant much of the county manager’s months of work would have to be scrapped.

It also meant the process of completing the budget process took considerably longer than planned, along with the wasting of who knows how many hours that had been spent developing a revenue and spending plan that would have kept Lee County on its same trajectory of growth as in the recent past.

The property tax base in the current fiscal year experienced a significant increase due to the reassessment of real and personal property values that took effect in the previous year. However, in years like the coming one, when property is not subject to revaluation, the county’s tax base can only grow through new construction activity, new personal property purchases, and increases in the value of motor vehicles.

Looking again for sources that have proven to be faithful to the county in the past, at potential new partners who are looking for spaces where they can collaborate and develop new ideas that show promise in addressing issues that have continued to confound communities for years, and seeking out others whose footprint would be a natural fit for existing industries and supportive partnerships that would plug into the county’s vision for growth continue to be promising strategies for coming months and years – this is still the vision of Lee County government as it enters the back half of the 2020s.

Here’s a look at several county departments where commissioners have planned to invest taxpayer dollars for the next 12 months, a roadmap laid out in Lee County’s budget for Fiscal Year 2025-26:

Education

North Carolina, along with the federal government, pays the majority of the costs for educating students from pre-kindergarten through college. Many of those costs are for instruction, student support, and administrative functions. Support from the county government helps cover utilities, insurance, maintenance, and other expenses not covered by other sources of funding.

The school board had asked for an increase of $3.6 million over the amount allocated by the commissioners in the previous budget. The highest priority in that request was $2 million for full implementation of the classified staff pay plan. But the county chose to give Lee County Schools an increase of $838,806, or a 3.9 percent increase in the system’s current operating expense, forcing school leaders to scramble for the fourth year in a row to find funding that will make their highest budget priority happen, even if it is at a significantly reduced level.

Addressing the commissioners to thank them for this year’s funding, Dossenbach expressed gratitude for every dollar the commissioners provided in the new budget. But he underscored again, as he has done repeatedly in the past, “we cannot continue to expect first-class results from a system that is funded as second tier.”

As it has for the past four years, the county will fund the school board’s request of $2 million for capital expenditures and $2.1 million for school resource officers.

Central Carolina Community College will receive funding of $64,930 for the Dennis A. Wicker Civic Center. The budget also includes funds to continue the Lee College Promise program, which offers up to two years of free in-state tuition and required fees at CCCC.

Library

The budget will take on five new employees when the new library opens in the spring of 2026. Three of these are librarian assistant positions, and two others are classified as Librarian I or Librarian II.

Parks and Recreation

The other spot garnering a lot of attention this year is the upcoming summer launch of Lee County Athletic Park. Four new maintenance workers will be hired to get the fields ready for competition and keep them in top shape, and a fifth person, an administrative and marketing specialist, will be in charge of scheduling, marketing, and communications.

Commissioners

There is a line item in the budget for a new meeting space for the Lee County Board of Commissioners and other groups, as space becomes available. This year’s budget includes $290,384 for commissioner department expenses (this includes travel, salaries, meeting expenses and other operational items), including $38,000 for equipping the meeting room with capabilities to stream content through the county’s channel as needed.

Elections

The recommended budget for FY 2025-26 is $961,008, a 15 percent increase over the previous year, mostly due to the possibility of five potential primaries and general elections in the next fiscal year.

County of Lee Transit System

The county’s public transportation system is getting ready to change in a very big way. The county will be merging COLTS with a new microtransit system the city of Sanford will be putting into place by the summer of 2026. Once operational, transportation within the city and through the county is expected to huge step forward. The costs associated with this new microtransit system are largely paid by the city through revenue it will generate, along with funding from a grant from the state.