Carrboro hears budget input

Though the Carrboro Board of Aldermen held a public hearing on next fiscal year’s budget Tuesday, the town will accept resident input on the budget until June.

The aldermen hold an annual public hearing for residents to request funds for projects to be considered before the town finalizes its annual budget — this year scheduled for June 21.

“The board really believes in citizen input,” Assistant Town Manager Bing Roenigk said.

The three residents who attended Tuesday’s hearing asked the aldermen to consider budget requests ranging from $500 to $22,000 for next fiscal year.

Robert Dowling, executive director of the Orange Community Housing and Land Trust, requested $22,000 from the aldermen for the upcoming fiscal year.

For the last two years the aldermen have allocated $20,000 annually to the trust, which helps provide affordable housing to area residents.

Nerys Levy, project director of the Community Dinner Committee, requested a $500 donation from the aldermen for the committee’s ninth annual dinner, held locally each February.

If approved, the donation will go to underwriting dinner tickets — $7.50 each, Levy said.

The aldermen have allocated $500 annually to the dinner since its second year. “People see some worth in celebrating our community,” Levy said.

Carrboro resident Ellen Perry, 46, requested that money be given to make sidewalks safer and to fund bicycle helmet safety programs.

“I know we’re in the process of making it better, but hurry up,” she said.

Though this year’s turnout was higher than some expected, Roenigk said the hearings typically have low turnouts — a trend she credits to the general contentment of Carrboro residents.

“There’s been no issue to galvanize people … and to me that says people are happy,” she said.

But the few requests made at the hearing do not reflect the number of people that will ask for consideration in the budget before it is finalized, Mayor Mike Nelson said.

“I’d expect that over the course of the next few months as we’re working on the budget that we’ll hear from folks via regular mail or e-mail,” he said.

The budget won’t be finalized until June, but residents who want to make requests should contact the aldermen or the town clerk in the next month, Nelson said.

“Our staff has to balance a lot of different needs,” Nelson said.

“What we try to do is meet the requests of our citizens as best we can under budget restraints.”

And with the need to provide services to areas recently annexed into Carrboro, the budget may be tighter than in the past, Roenigk said.

She said that the town has identified an additional 2.42 cents of need for such services for the next fiscal year, but that those numbers are preliminary.

 

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.