City Budget Large On Largess
With Mecklenburg County drowning in debt and struggling to plug an $81-million budget gap, the City of Charlotte’s spending plan has managed to fly under the radar virtually unnoticed, despite being chock full of questionable expenditures that could stand a spotlight.
Take, for example, the $602,000 that the city manager’s recommended budget allocates for so-called business investment grants, known less euphemistically as corporate bribes, which represents an increase of about $122,000.
Then there’s the nearly $2.1 million doled out for various synthetic tax-increment financing (TIF) schemes, where a percentage of property taxes paid by a development is refunded to the developer, instead of being used to fund other city core functions or to give regular taxpayers a modicum of property tax relief.
The $2.1 million in TIF rebates include about $1.6 million for the vaunted uptown cultural arts facilities campus, $355,000 for the Midtown Square/Metropolitan project, and $58,000 for Wesley Village/Bryant Park, where the money is being used to fund construction of the Stewart Creek Parkway.
Under the recommended budget, TIF payments skyrocket from $2.1 million in 2011 to $7.1 million in 2015, a five-year bounty that totals more than $24 million in property tax rebates to various projects (to tag a few: $8.3 million for uptown’s cultural arts campus; $2.7 million for a connector road to serve a Pope & Land development on at the former site of the old Coliseum; $1.5 million for a connector road for IKEA; $3.8 million for the Metropolitan; $516,00 for Carolina Theatre redevelopment; and $2.6 million for the Seaboard/ARK Management/NC Music Factory).
The budget also includes revenue and expenditure schedules for two big-ticket, hot button items. The NASCAR Hall of Fame shows $7.2 million in revenue, down 5.2 percent, from its dedicated funding source of a 2-percent increase to the hotel/motel occupancy tax and $320,000 from interest on investments, down 16.4 percent. Expenditures total $9.7 million, with $2.1 drawn from reserves comprising the balance.
Revenues for the cultural arts facilities, mostly from its dedicated funding source of a 5-percent hike to the car-rental tax, increased 28 percent and total $8.6 million, including a $2.9 million payment from Mecklenburg County. Expenditures ring up at $6.6 million, with $1.9 million dumped into reserves for anticipated increased future debt payments.
Speaking of travel and tourism, at a time when most families are heading into summer feeling a pinch in their vacation budgets, the mayor and city council are flying high: their travel budget increases by $25,395. Overall, the mayor and city council’s take of the city budget stands at $1.4 million, to include funding for nine full-time employees. One can only assume it takes that many folks working around the clock to track the mayor and council’s various travel itineraries.
Meanwhile, City Manager Curt Walton’s department snags $15.2 million, which includes funding for 199 full-time positions. Under the manager’s department umbrella is the Community Relations Committee ($1 million, 10 positions); the communications and public information division ($1.8 million, 19 positions); the 311 call center ($7.3 million, 136 positions); internal audit ($903,000, nine positions); information and technical governance ($2 million, 15 positions); and the all-encompassing “support for mayor and council and policy development and organizational leadership” ($2 million, 10 positions).
The city manager’s total recommended budget cashes out at $1.64 billion, capital and operating, representing a drop of 11.6 percent from the current year. The bulk of the decline comes from enterprise capital projects, largely utilities, which have been delayed.
The city’s general fund rolls in at $445.5 million, for a more modest dip of 1.25 percent. Police and fire services eat up about 65 percent of general fund revenue, with solid waste taking 9.7 percent, transportation, 4.7 percent, engineering and property management, 4.1 percent, and customer service and technology, 3.6 percent.
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