While the council has yet to finalize the city’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget, it will require pulling $1.25 million from reserves to pay down debt and jumpstart amphitheater operations.
Because the city has kept the same tax rate of 53 mills for FY 2027, the budget will not include a tax increase.
During a Thursday budget session at City Hall, the council unanimously approved allocating $749,000 to pay off two tax increment financing bonds – one for the University Mall development on Wilkins-Wise Road and the other for the Moore’s Creek property on 18th Avenue – carrying interest rates greater than 7%.
Ward 6 Councilman Jason Spears, who proposed paying off the bonds, said the money had effectively already been collected for that purpose, though it had not been formally earmarked. In other words, it should not be sitting in the fund balance at all.
“While I understand it seems like … that’s a big ask to go into it, the money was already collected for this purpose,” he said. “It just wasn’t accounted for on those line items for that actual need that we go ahead and put the money aside to pay those TIF bonds off.”
Spears said retiring the bonds will stop the city from routing ad valorem tax collections “back out the door” to cover debt service, especially as the bonds reach the 11-year mark, at which point they can be retired. The Moore’s Creek bond reached that threshold, while the University Mall bond will hit that mark in November, he said.
The council also approved a $500,000 allocation to fund operational costs for the Sen. Terry Brown Amphitheater on the Island once its complete, an increase from the initial $300,000 placeholder Chief Financial Officer Jim Brigham had for the venue.
Both Mayor Stephen Jones and Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene, both of whom sit on a stakeholder committee for the amphitheater, agreed $300,000 likely isn’t enough to cover operational costs for the first year, like marketing the venue or booking artists, but both said it’s a start.
“There’s so much more stuff that has to be done just in preparation of getting everything to that point,” Jones said.
Spears questioned the reasoning for the initial $300,000 placeholder, suggesting a more defined allocation would cushion the city for any higher than expected costs that arise. For example, if the city budgets $600,000 for the venue expecting it will cost only half that, but it ends up closer to $475,000, the city has the funding in place to cover the extra $175,000 without going into “panic mode” and moving money around, he said.
The board approved the increase to $500,000 unanimously, though Spears said that doesn’t necessarily mean all the funds will be spent.
“It’s just to have it there so that the operational costs come up as we’re trying to make sure that the promoters and all the people that are going to have to be a part of that effort (get paid),” Spears told The Dispatch after the meeting. “Those (funds) are there, and we’re not having to take some other part of the budget.”
Spears said these moves would lower the city’s fund balance to between $8.3 and $8.5 million by the end of next fiscal year.
In a three-hour executive session Thursday, the council also approved raises for some city employees, though Jones said the total amount required to fund those raises hasn’t been nailed down just yet. The council will meet again at 9 a.m. Monday to finalize the budget.
Jones said some raises target specific positions with the goal of “bringing them up to where they should be.” All other employees “but a few,” he said, will receive 3% raises.
“I’m not totally happy but I respect the process,” Jones wrote in a text to The Dispatch regarding the final decisions made on raises.
Spears on Thursday also tried to secure $125,000 to address drainage issues in Ward 6. That funding would have been held in the department the council created in July to hold funding for ward-specific projects.
With little support from the board, Spears withdrew the motion and told The Dispatch after the meeting the department will not be funded in FY 2027.
“At this point, we’re still building it out, so we can see how this year … we do on the project side, so we get a better idea of what we might need in the future,” he said.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.