Fayetteville residents and downtown business owners may not see their taxes increase as significantly as it first seemed, after the city council reached consensus on Wednesday to decrease proposed rates ahead of a final vote on the budget.
“You are getting a balanced budget at a lower tax rate,” City Manager Doug Hewett told council members when he presented the latest budget at Wednesday’s work session.
In the first budget proposed by Hewett, ad valorem property taxes would increase by 5 cents per $100 valuation, but the new version lessens the increase by 1 cent, to 4 cents per $100 valuation.
The Municipal Service District (MSD) tax, applied only to property owners of downtown businesses, will increase by 7 cents per $100 valuation, as opposed to the initially proposed 11-cent rate hike, under the latest budget. The steep MSD tax increase had prompted pushback from downtown business owners, including members of the Cool Springs Downtown District, several of whom had expressed concerns about it at recent council meetings.
The proposed tax rates won’t become official until the council votes on the budget on June 24.
Office of Community Safety
Another notable budget change that the council reached consensus on at Wednesday’s work session included adding an alternative response pilot program in Fayetteville’s Office of Community Safety budget. An alternate response program is a relatively new form of public safety that involves having social workers and mental health professionals respond to non-violent 911 calls, often working alongside EMTs and police officers.
Advocates and some members of city council have been pushing for this type of program to be implemented in Fayetteville for over a year as part of the city’s developing Office of Community Safety. Supporters have argued an alternate response program will help reduce gun violence and improve public health by providing skilled support for at-risk individuals and people experiencing mental health issues and free up police to focus on law enforcement and solving crimes.
The alternate response pilot program joins other aspects of the Office of Community Safety budget, such as violence intervention programs, support for the unhoused, youth engagement programs and other prosocial measures to supplement traditional police work.
In addition to adding the program to the budget, the council agreed to bolster the office with $800,000 in general fund money, bringing total new funding for the office’s development to $2.3 million ($1.5 million was already included to establish the office). The office’s budget is still unofficial, as it will need to be approved with other items in the full budget vote on June 24.
School Resource Officers
In addition to discussing the budget at Wednesday’s work session, city officials also briefly discussed the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office’s decision to stop providing School Resource Officers (SRO) and crossing guards to public schools in municipalities come July.
If the Fayetteville Police Department were to replace the SROs in city schools, based on the existing model, it would take about 27 police officers to serve that function, Assistant City Manager Adam Lindsay told the council during Wednesday’s work session.
Fayetteville Police Chief Kemberle Braden said that, whether or not Fayetteville chooses to have FPD officers serve as SROs, come July 1, his department will now be responsible for responding to criminal activity and public safety threats in Fayetteville schools. Previously, Braden said, the sheriff’s office was responsible for this, with FPD only responding to emergency calls, like shootings.
“So if there was an incident that occurred at a school, a BNE [breaking and entering], if there was a fight, an assault, if there was a larceny, those would be things that the Fayetteville Police Department now had to respond to and accept responsibility for taking that report and investigating those crimes,” Braden said.
Hewett said the city has not received any “formal request” from Cumberland County Schools to have the police department provide officers to serve as SROs. Braden indicated it was ultimately up to the schools to decide where to go from here.
“It’s the responsibility of the Cumberland County schools to provide security within those schools,” Braden said. “Currently, they’re under contract with the sheriff’s office, and as the sheriff’s office backs out of that contract or relinquishes responsibility for that contract for the upcoming school year, it’s up to the Cumberland County Board of Education to determine who they want to contract with in the future.”
The council will vote to adopt the final budget at the next regular city council meeting. That meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. on June 24 at City Hall, 433 Hay St.
Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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