More (minor) changes coming to solid waste services

Some small changes are coming to county solid waste customers, and it only affects those in Carrboro and Chapel Hill town limits, meaning Hillsborough is not affected. Which is why it's on the blog but not in the paper. From Solid Waste:

Beginning Monday September 14 about 10,500 households within town limits of Carrboro and Chapel Hill will have a new curbside recycling day.
There will be no change in service for 7,700 homes, including all households within the Town of Hillsborough. Affected households are being mailed a postcard alerting them to the change. Signs will be posted at key intersection of impacted areas.
Route information will be posted on the County's web page www.co.orange.nc.us/recycling.
"Over the past ten years the differential growth in our communities has resulted in a significant imbalance in the number of households serviced each day," explained Gayle Wilson, Solid Waste Management Director. "As a result of the current uneven geographic distribution of the units serviced on any one day, present routes are inefficient and have become operationally impractical. The expansion of collection programs to include mixed paper in 2006 and now corrugated cardboard in 2008 has resulted in each household generating more recyclable material. This has put pressure on the current collection system and has exposed the need to perform this reroute to increase efficiency."
Rerouting the urban curbside program will help make collection more efficient, rebalance the work-load, and help to ensure the best service for our citizens. A comprehensive outreach effort to publicize the reroute will make the transition relatively smooth. The majority of the costs for this outreach campaign will be paid for by curbside contractor Waste Industries.
Impacted households are evenly distributed throughout Carrboro and Chapel Hill while the service day for households in the Town of Hillsborough will not be effected. This reroute will end the informal practice of having recycling collection and trash collection take place on the same day for residents of Carrboro. There has been no effort, past or present, to coordinate the trash collection day and recycling day in the two other municipalities, and the need to maintain this routing practice for Carrboro is no longer practical as it has become counter productive to the creating the most efficient routing.

As many might have noticed, this is not the only change coming to Solid Waste services in the county. A week from Sunday, the Bradshaw Quarry Solid Waste Convenience Center (or BQSWCC, as the kids call it) will be closing permanently. Residents are still urging commissioners to reconsider the "permanently" part.

Tonight's county budget meeting

The Orange County Commissioners will meet again tonight to settle on an FY10 budget (Complete agenda here). On tap are some final decisions on issues dominating previous meetings, including libraries and the Carrboro High School arts wing.
Based on comments at previous meetings, commissioners intend to keep all library branches open but to limit the number of hours the Hillsborough branch remains open (54 hours per week). According to tonight's background material, the cost of keeping all of the branches open under this plan is $1,567,542, almost $437,000 more than was originally recommended. Tonight, commissioners and staff will discuss a funding plan to cover increased costs.
Commissioners also committed to building the high school arts wing, though no money needs to budgeted in the upcoming fiscal year.
Also, solid waste convenience center hours will be discussed, as will various collection schedules. We'll have more tomorrow, and of course, more in next week's paper.

Next week's paper

Here's what I am working on for next week (subject to changes, additions and deletions):

— I'll follow up a bit more on the town budget and address some of where the town manager thinks the town is going, revenue-wise, in the coming years. Plus, there are a few other cost-cutting moves being considered.

— The county released its proposed budget this week, with a revenue-neutral ad valorem rate of 85.8 cents. The total budget is more than $5 million under last year's total. I'll have some fast facts on what's being proposed. Considering I am sitting on both town and county budgets (not literally, but the town's paper copy is quite fat), county information is likely to come in installments as work sessions occur. The public hearing in Hillsborough is at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 21.

— The church story will be coming now that I settled a background research issue that was bugging me (and town staff). Apparently, the church at its current address did not exist in town records. But that's a story for another day ...

— We'll have some pictures from this weekend's garden tour, Faulkner's opening and lots of other goodies.

We will also have two interns from Carolina Friends School joining us for two weeks beginning next Tuesday. We've done some brainstorming on a project they can work on while here, but as always, we're open to suggestions.

One last note — the Burwell School is having a Pet Appreciation Night during Last Fridays, and they are currently accepting cute pet photos as part of a contest. Photos in any form — digital, 35 mm, old-timey sepia tone — can be submitted by May 28, with judging to take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. May 29.

tuesday's joint schools/county commissioners meeting

Orange County and Chapel Hill/Carrboro City schools met Tuesday with the Orange County Board of Commissioners to present their proposed budgets for the next fiscal year.

Chair Steve Halkiotis compared the current recession and budget cycle to the Depression, saying the last time public school funding was cut was during that era.

Superintendent Patrick Rhodes gave the budget presentation, saying funding cuts from the county and state would be "a serious double whammy."

The district's fund balance is down significantly from several years ago, and rested at just a little more than $1 million, at the time of the last audit. Rhodes said the district is committed to not spending that money to make up for any shortfalls.

The cuts made during the 2008-2009 school year combined with the cuts the district may have to make to survive this budget cycle amount to 10 percent, Rhodes said.

For that and other reasons, Rhodes asked the commissioners to cut the per pupil by $139 instead of the $189 commissioners proposed. Board of Education members decided to go this route at their last work session, Friday, April 24.

Rhodes said the district has tried to make cuts that wouldn't affect the classroom, but decreasing the per pupil allotment by $189 would force them to make those cuts.

He said the district is facing, among other things, cuts in state at-risk funds, which would hurt children and families who need help the most.

Board member Eddie Eubanks said he hoped commissioners would be able to make up for that loss.

"I think it's not appropriate to balance the budgets on the backs of those least able to withstand it," he said.

Halkiotis said he hoped commissioners would be able to help the district.

"Help us any way you can because we're not going to get help from Raleigh," he said. "I'm not looking to the east anymore. I'm looking right at home."

Chapel Hill/Carrboro City Schools, meanwhile, also presented their budget. Their big issues were whether or not Elementary No. 11 and the arts wing addition to Carrboro High Schools would be built as originally planned. BOCC Chair Valerie Foushee said that was "uncertain."

For more, see Wednesday's News of Orange County.

It's going to be a tough budget cycle

Last night, Orange County Commissioners met in a work session in which they discussed several scenarios for forming a budget for the coming fiscal year. Of the four scenarios discussed, the outcome for the county (and thus money for schools and other public services) was not sunny — the county could come up anywhere between $8.7 million and $16.7 million short of last year's $183 million revenue.

Commissioners also sought to clarify a point that they felt had not been fully relayed to the public — the county is seeking a property tax rate that will generate no more revenue than it did last year. That is revenue-neutral, in it's definition, they said, but it is not tax-neutral. Taxpayers will likely see their property taxes go up.

The reason this would still be revenue-neutral is that other taxes collected — such as on motor vehicles and sales tax — are projected to be down significantly. This is because people are spending less — the example was that if they got X revenue from tax on a new car or updated infrastructure from a major company, that money isn't coming in this year because purchases are being delayed.

Now, one of the four scenarios (which are not their only options) assumed that revaluations would go through and the county would "hold harmless" taxpayers whose properties increased by 24 percent or less. That would be more than 54 percent of taxable properties; it would lose the county $16.7 million in revenue compared to last year.

The final decision was to pursue a revenue-neutral ad valorem tax rate, and to potentially cut from there to meet the budget goal. That rev-neutral would be somewhere between 84 and 87 cents per $100 valuation, a drop of 13 to 16 cents from this year's 99.8 cents.

We'll have an article next week detailing their discussion and with more information about whose valuations have gone up by how much. Two-hundred and forty-two properties increased by more than 100 percent; commissioners said that those people should be encouraged to appeal if they have not already. That 242 figure should be put in perspective, though —that's .09 percent of total taxable properties, of which there are more than 51,000.

Look for more next week.