Ants In Gaston County
Fat, lazy grasshoppers in Mecklenburg, by way of Aesop’s fable that teaches to, “prepare for want before it comes.”
County Manager Jan Winters explains how Gaston was able to avoid a tax hike this year, even while selling off the first load of bonds voters approved three years ago to build a new high school, two middle schools and an elementary school: “… because in the past several years we haven’t added to budget growth. We’ve been tightening instead of expanding.”
The county also planned ahead using budget forecasts that deliberately low-balled revenue expectations – “Even though things were bad,” Winters said, “they were better than we’d projected,” – and had stockpiled a healthy fund balance that could be drawn down to help fill budget gaps without dire cuts.
In other words, pretty much exactly the opposite of what Mecklenburg County has done to steamroll its way into an $81-million budget shortfall.
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