Up, up and away.

 It’s not about balloons; it’s about the tax bills Greensboro residents and property owners are going to get this summer.  And the damage is just beginning: The Guilford County Commissioners are still trying to figure out what they’re going to do, and there the question isn’t whether the county will have a tax increase on top of Greensboro’s, the question is simply how much that increase will be.

The Greensboro City Council adopted its new 2026-2027 budget Tuesday night, June 16, and that budget comes with a major property tax rate increase.

The new budget includes a total City of Greensboro property tax rate of 79.85 cents per $100 of assessed property value. That’s a 12.6-cent increase over the current city property tax rate of 67.25 cents.

The city’s all-funds budget is $909.8 million and the General Fund budget is $485.3 million.

The tax increase is being applied to the old property values – determined in 2022 – rather than the new Guilford County revaluation values because of Senate Bill 889, the “Property Tax Reappraisal Moratorium,” which passed the North Carolina General Assembly last week.

That bill prevents counties with reappraisals effective Jan. 1, 2026 from using those new values for the 2026-2027 fiscal year. For Guilford County, that means that the county, Greensboro, High Point, the county’s towns and fire districts have to build their budgets using the older 2022 property values instead of the new 2026 values.

That might sound like good news for taxpayers, and for some property owners it is. But it also means the city has to use a much lower tax base.

Greensboro’s budget documents show the city had expected to use an assessed value base of about $56.1 billion after the revaluation. Without the revaluation, the city has been working with a tax base of about $40.1 billion.

In other words, the City of Greensboro lost about $16 billion in taxable value for budget purposes.

The city had originally been looking at a much lower tax rate on the new, higher values. Under the budget adopted Tuesday night, Greensboro instead is charging a higher rate on the older, lower values. City officials said one penny on the tax rate would have generated about $5.6 million after the revaluation. On the current values, one penny only generates about $4 million.

So, under the old values, each penny does less work.

Greensboro officials said that the new rate is needed to maintain core city services, including public safety, parks and recreation, solid waste and recycling, road maintenance, water quality and basic city operations.

“This budget is about maintaining the quality of life our residents expect while preparing Greensboro for the future,” City Manager Trey Davis stated in the city’s press release regarding the new budget. “We understand that any tax increase is significant, and that’s why we’ve worked diligently to ensure every dollar is invested in services and infrastructure that directly benefit our community.”

The budget includes funding for 30 additional police officer positions, expanded Behavioral Health Response Team coverage, continued investment in communications systems and public safety equipment, restored hours at lakes and recreation centers and additional support for solid waste, recycling, roads, facilities, utilities and water quality.

Also in the new budget is more than $20 million in additional funding for public safety.

The budget includes about $3.4 million in new General Fund expansion, meaning city officials are arguing that the main driver of the increase is not a large list of new programs but the cost of maintaining existing services. Those costs include employees, vehicles, radios, software, equipment replacement, fuel, utilities, disposal costs, contracts and debt-supported equipment.

But that’s not all: The city is also increasing the water utility rate by 11.4 percent.  So in addition to higher taxes, your water bill is going up.

According to the city, water treatment chemical costs alone have increased by about 50 percent over the last four years. The city also cited higher construction costs, including a roughly 38 percent increase in asphalt costs and a roughly 66 percent increase in stone material costs over the last six years.

Greensboro Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter warned the Rhino Times last week that the city could be forced into exactly this situation if Senate Bill 889 passed.

“We’re going to have to look at whether we’re going to have to raise the property tax rate,” Abuzuaiter said at the time.

And that’s exactly what the City Council did this week.

Abuzuaiter also said last week that Greensboro had been preparing its budget under the assumption that the city could use the new revaluation values and then lower the tax rate. She said she would have liked to go revenue neutral but she didn’t believe that would cover the city’s rising costs.

Abuzuaiter said the city is facing higher costs in employee health care, public safety, fuel, asphalt, diesel, buses and chemicals used in the water system.

She also told the Rhino Times  the city had already cut back in some areas and had been under a hiring freeze for nearly a year.

“We’re not wasting any money,” Abuzuaiter said last week.

The city’s budget presentation stated that departments have made reductions and identified savings – including 5.5 full-time equivalent position reductions, operating savings, stormwater charge reductions and current-year vacancy savings.

The city also cited printer consolidation, improved reimbursements, fleet monitoring, better routing, inventory controls and asset management as examples of operational efficiencies.

Davis said the city isn’t funding luxury items, just true needs.

“The bottom line is simple,” Davis said. “These are not luxury services. They are the essential services that residents rely on every day. This budget allows us to maintain those services, respond to growth and continue building a stronger Greensboro while remaining mindful of the financial realities facing our residents.”

The city’s own examples show that the effect of the no-revaluation budget won’t be the same for everyone. For a home currently valued at $128,700 that would have increased 82 percent under revaluation, the no-revaluation approach results in a tax bill of about $1,028, compared to about $1,368 if the new revaluation had been used with the lower proposed rate.

For a home currently valued at $307,300 that would have increased 22 percent under revaluation, the no-revaluation approach results in a tax bill of about $2,454, compared to about $2,182 under the revaluation scenario.

So the revaluation delay helps some property owners and hurts others compared to the budget Greensboro originally expected to adopt.

The city argues that the no-revaluation approach makes the tax impact more proportional to current values and avoids some of the large jumps that would have hit lower-valued homes whose assessed values rose more sharply in the revaluation.

Greensboro isn’t the only local government dealing with the fallout from Senate Bill 889.

Guilford County is now facing the same problem.

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners had been scheduled to adopt a new county budget this week, but county officials changed that schedule after Senate Bill 889 passed.

The commissioners have called a special work session for Thursday afternoon, June 18 to figure out what changes need to be made to the county budget.

Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston warned weeks ago that the legislation would force the county to rethink its budget.

Alston said the county would either have to raise the tax rate on the old values or cut services.

“We’re going to have to probably cut some services,” Alston said. “We’re just going to have to adjust accordingly.”

Alston warned just before the bill passed that Guilford County could have trouble funding additional employees for the sheriff’s office, EMS, social services and other departments.

“We have thousands of other people that have moved into Guilford County since last year,” Alston said. “The services for them have to be provided.”

At the time, Alston said he didn’t want to simply raise the county tax rate enough to recover all of the money that would be lost by being forced to use the older values. However, the math may leave county commissioners with few pleasant choices.

Greensboro has now made its decision: a 79.85-cent tax rate and a 12.6-cent increase.  Look for Guilford County to pile onto that.

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