BRUNSWICK COUNTY — Brunswick County’s proposed budget will keep the current tax rate going into next fiscal year, as the county continues to face a growing population.
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Last month, Brunswick County Manager Steve Stone presented the $416-million balanced budget, which represents a 6.2% increase over fiscal year 2024-2025. He stated the budget would not include an ad valorem tax rate change from the current 34.2 cents per $100 valuation.
The rate has been the same since 2023, when Brunswick County underwent its last property revaluation. Residents saw a rise of 75% in their property values and commissioners brought down the rate from 48.5 cents, which had been in place since 2016.
Brunswick’s next revaluation will occur in 2027, which likely will see increases due to the county’s growth. Brunswick is ranked first in North Carolina for population percentage growth and fourth in numeric population growth. Its population was estimated at 167,112 in 2024, up from 2020’s 136,689.
Despite its needs to support growth, Brunswick County is not planning to increase the tax rate in its 2025-2026 budget. Instead, staff proposes to use its fund balance to fulfill its budget needs.
Spokesperson Meagan Kascsak said the fund balance appropriation is consistent with prior years and called it “reasonable” due to the county’s current financial position and risk-averse approach to budgeting.
“The county appropriates fund balance each year to assist in meeting the capital outlay needs but strives to save the appropriated amount to lower the burden on property tax owners,” she wrote in an email.
While Brunswick County commissioners have a history of keeping tax rates level for multiple years, Stone expressed worry during his budget presentation to the board in May that a tax increase may be difficult to avoid in the future.
“I think it’s going to be challenging if not impossible to keep our tax rate this low in the future,” Stone said. “I think there are going to be more service demands, more demands to support our educational partners and things that are really going to force us to look for additional local revenue in the future.”
Following Stone’s presentation, Commissioner Randy Thompson thanked him for not raising the rate and urged him to explore all future options to keep it low.
“I understand the logic in looking forward and saying that we would have a forthcoming tax increase,” Thompson said. “You’ve got a year to figure out how to not make that happen.”
The county is projected to collect $184 million in property taxes next fiscal year, a 5.6% increase from this year due to the expansion of its tax base. The county is also projected to collect $50 million in local option sales taxes – the local tax on top of the statewide tax – an increase of 5.4% from this year. The total county sales tax revenues are projected to be $38.4 million, 5.3% higher than this year.
Though the county will collect more tax revenue, Stone said the revenue in both property taxes and sales taxes isn’t increasing at the same rate as population growth.
“I believe in most cases that residential growth really doesn’t pay for itself in terms of local revenues,” Stone said.
Stone told Port City Daily when the property tax base growth is primarily residential, the cost of providing additional public services often exceeds the tax revenues generated by increased property values. He said in situations where there is a broader mix of growth among residential, commercial and industrial tax bases, it’s more likely that growth will generate sufficient tax revenues to meet the cost of increased service demands.
Here is a breakdown of some of the funds covered in the budget:
Population and staffing
To support growth, the budget includes funding for 51 new positions. Stone said they include 42 governmental positions and nine enterprise positions tackling increased public safety and emergency recovery resources, improved effectiveness of controls, communications and systems, expanded library services and improved health and social services to meet mandated service guidelines.
According to the budget message these positions include:
- Internal auditor in county administration
- Additional communications specialist
- Finance systems analyst
- Voter outreach and communications coordinator
- Custodial assistant
- Four detectives, one sergeant for professional standards, and one additional administrative assistant for the Ash Waccamaw Multi-Use Building
- Emergency management planner / administrative assistant
- 16 paramedics
- Community paramedic
- Four additional telecommunicators
- Two additional library assistants
- Athletic specialist
- Additional site maintenance crew consisting of one crew lead and one crew assistant
- Interpreter
- Paralegal
- Social worker III – adult protective services
- Social worker I – visitation
Stone said during the meeting that the proposed budget takes into consideration employee retention and expanding appropriate staff capacity.
To help with employee retention, the budget provides for a market adjustment for employees based on the numerical score of each employee’s evaluations.
This includes 3% market adjustment to employees who meet expectations; 1.75% to 2.3% merit to employees who meet expectations; 2.45% to 3.35% merit to employees who exceed expectations; and 3.5% to 3.75% merit to exceptional county employees.
Education, public safety, human services
Education is set to receive the largest portion of the general fund’s total expenditures with a total of $83.1 million, representing a $5.1 million increase from last year. The county’s agreement with the Brunswick County Board of Education requires it to provide 36.5% of the ad valorem tax revenue to the schools for operating expenditures. A portion of the funding will pay for furniture, equipment and vehicles.
Following education, public safety makes up the next largest portion of the budget with $81.4 million, a $4.9 million increase from last year. These increases will help support the sector’s capital projects, such as the construction of an animal protection services adoption center and Northeast EMS Base Station.
The following are recommended expenditures for the remaining county departments:
- Human services: $40.7 million
- Environmental protection: $28.2 million
- Central services: $27.5 million
- General government: $20 million
- Net transfer to project reserves: $12.3 million
- Economic development: $11.6 million
- Culture and recreation: $7.9 million
- Transportation: $161,000
The county has also proposed an increase in funding for Brunswick Community College and Brunswick Senior Resources, Inc.
To maintain its existing programs, Brunswick Community College will receive $6.3 million, representing an increase of $419,931 compared to this year. Included in the funding is a $350,000 grant to assist with tuition and fees for qualified Brunswick County High School graduates to attend BCC.
Brunswick Senior Resources, Inc. is also set to receive $3.9 million. This includes a total of $316,733 for a full year of operations at the Ash Waccamaw Multi-Use Facility and a $191,901 increase to offset the reduction in the Home and Community Care Block Grant,administered by the North Carolina Division of Aging.
“While generally things are positive, the level of uncertainty about particularly state and federal funding sources is higher than I’ve really seen in my career and I started in 1980,” Stone said.
The first public hearing of the budget was scheduled for Monday, June 2; however, no one signed up to speak. A second public hearing will be held on Monday, June 16, at 6 p.m. prior to the board of commissioners’ vote on the budget adoption.
