The Fayetteville City Council spent its second budget work session searching for ways to avoid a property tax increase while weighing millions of dollars in unfunded requests and previewing a new online budget transparency portal.
The session on Thursday is part of a series of budget meetings leading up to a June budget vote, where council must decide whether to support a recommended 3-cent property tax increase or cut into existing services and wish‑list items instead.
On May 14, City Manager Doug Hewett proposed a $322 million budget for fiscal year 2027. Alongside the tax rate increase, the budget recommends a $10 annual increase in the solid‑waste fee—about 83 cents per month—to offset higher fuel and operational costs. No other fee increases are proposed.
Unfunded Projects
Alongside the balanced budget, staff presented a list of unfunded items on Thursday. These are council‑requested additions not currently included in the budget that would need their cost offset somewhere else in the budget or funded with additional revenue, Hewett said.
Among the items discussed:
- $350,000 for improvements to Langdon Street, including streetscape and median work tied to recent utility projects and heavy use near Fayetteville State University.
- $250,000 for a downtown convention center study to test market demand, facility size, and location options for a convention center distinct from a hotel with meeting space like the one the county recently proposed for downtown.
- $71,000 for a housing needs assessment, which is meant to guide where and what types of housing the city should pursue
- $75,000 for the Fayetteville Dogwood Festival.
- $350,000 for the 910 Future Fest, organized by the Fayetteville Next Advisory Commission alongside the nonprofit Two-Six Project, scheduled for September 24-26.
- $150,000 for a downtown manager, a position proposed by Councilmember Malik Davis that would be in charge of all things downtown, including new development.
In April, council voted 7-3 to award the Dogwood Festival a $75,000 grant after Executive Director Kaylynn Suarez told them the nonprofit is facing rising production costs that it can no longer absorb.
Suarez pitched three proposals to the council, including $100,000 each year for five years and $30,000 to support a new downtown street dance monthly summer micro‑event series.
Councilmembers Deno Hondros and Malik Davis pushed back on funding the Dogwood Festival again.
“I don’t think that we should have this discussion, unless they come back to us,” Davis said.
With the feasibility study for a convention center, several councilmembers questioned whether the city needs to pay for a new study at all, given that Cumberland County has already commissioned a similar one.
Hewett said the county’s work is helpful, but it focused on a hotel with attached meeting space, not a standalone convention center.
Mayor Pro Tem Derrick Thompson strongly argued that the study—and ultimately a convention center—should be a priority.
“We are in desperate need of the convention center that is designated as a convention center,” he said.
Several councilmembers said they are under pressure from residents not to raise property taxes and are looking for cuts in the budget or deferring expenditures to future budget years..
Hewett stressed that it’s up to councilmembers to convince each other and give direction if they want to reduce spending.
“Every suggestion that y’all are making, y’all are not convincing me. It really is convincing the councilmembers that you want it out of the budget,” Hewett said.
Public Safety Funding Tensions
Much of the latter part of the work session focused on vacancy savings—the difference between what the city budgets for personnel and what it actually spends when positions are unfilled—and how those savings are used.
Assistant City Manager Jeffrey Yates explained that the current budget assumes about $8.9 million in vacancy savings citywide. That total is calculated by comparing budgeted payroll with actual payroll across 26 pay periods, not by tagging individual frozen positions.
Those savings are already built into the proposed budget and used to lower the overall cost of current services, he said, which helps keep the recommended tax increase to one cent rather than a larger hike. The proposed tax rate includes one cent for the operating budget and two additional cents dedicated to the Capital Improvement Plan, which together account for the full 3‑cent increase.
The discussion fed into a broader debate over public safety funding, particularly for the police department, where 38 positions remain frozen.
Staff presented scenarios showing that funding those positions would likely require an additional 1-cent increase in taxes unless council chooses to cut elsewhere.
Hondros objected to the idea that maintaining or expanding police staffing, training, facilities, and leases, means the city must either raise taxes or strip funding from other parts of the police budget.
Hewett and Yates defended the proposal as a reflection of fiscal reality, not an attempt to shortchange public safety. They noted that public safety remains the largest and fastest-growing part of the general fund.
“The budget you have in front of you represents the financial constraints of the city,” Yates told the council. The manager’s recommendation, he said, is to fund the police department at its requested level with the 1‑cent tax increase. If council chooses not to raise taxes, staff have laid out where cuts would likely fall.
“Then why are we playing games with their budget,” Hondros responded, referring to the claim of public safety as a top priority.
New Budget Transparency Tool
Budget staff unveiled a new transparency portal that allows residents to explore the city’s current and prior budgets online.
The portal has interactive charts and tables to see where money comes from and how it’s spent, from the overall general fund to specific departments and line items such as salaries, supplies, and contract services.
It also allows residents to view historical trends, comparing actual spending, revised budgets, and the upcoming year’s recommendation.
“This is meant for residents to be able to look at the data themselves, to interact with it, educate themselves, and come back and talk to us,” Hewett told the council.
Yates said the system updates daily at 4 a.m. with actual spending numbers.
Hewett said staff are also working on what he called a “public checkbook” feature that would eventually allow residents to see transaction-level financial data, such as specific vendor payments, invoices, and ledger entries.
That system is in testing, with a rollout targeted for January.
“You can download the data, manipulate the data, and show it in any number of ways on your own,” Hewett said.
For the proposed budget, staff also showed off an interactive “budget challenge” option that asks how residents would divide $100 in city funds among priorities like roads, transit and stormwater, then submit comments on the proposed budget.
Councilmembers praised the new tools and pressed for them to be highly visible on the city’s homepage, at least during budget season, rather than buried several clicks deep. Staff said they were working on that.
The council will continue budget work sessions at 10 a.m. on Thursday and June 1. Here’s how you can have a say in the city’s budget process.
The budget is expected to be adopted on June 8.
Government reporter Rachel Heimann Mercader can be reached at rheimann@cityviewnc.com or 910-988-8045.
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