Rarely do you see city staff defy a direct request from the Greensboro City Council, but according to the agenda for the Tuesday, May 3 City Council meeting, that is city staff’s intent.
At the Thursday, April 28 work session, the City Council had a lengthy discussion on a mundane topic – the unallocated fund balance also called the emergency fund. The North Carolina Local Government Commission (LGC) has changed the calculation for the minimum requirement for the fund balance. It had been 8 percent of the total city budget and the LGC changed that to 25 percent of general fund expenditures. Using the old calculation, the city had well over the minimum in the fund balance. However, using the new calculation Greensboro is about $9 million short of the minimum.
The LGC has required Greensboro to present a plan to bring the fund balance up to the minimum by May 8. The plan presented at the work session by Financial and Administrative Services Department Director Marlene Druga was to dedicate 0.25 cents of a proposed 1.5 cent tax increase to the fund balance.
Druga said this would get the city to the required minimum fund balance in 10 years.
The City Council didn’t like the idea of taking 10 years to reach the minimum.
Councilmember Justin Outling suggested using American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds and eliminate the deficit this year. Councilmember Tammi Thurm amended that suggestion to paying two-thirds of the $9 million with ARP funds.
Both Mayor Nancy Vaughan and Councilmember Nancy Hoffmann said that 10 years was too long and they would prefer a plan that rectified the issue in five years.
Although the council doesn’t ordinarily vote in work sessions, it does take action by consensus. At Vaughan’s direction the council reached an 8-1 consensus to direct staff to bring a plan to the May 3 meeting that would bring the city up to the minimum in five years.
The plan that is on the agenda for the May 3 meeting is the same plan that was presented at the City Council work session using 0.25 cents of the proposed tax increase to bring the city up to the minimum required by the LGC in 10 years.
It is as if the discussion and decision by the City Council never took place.
Monkeys still running the zoo. Use your vote wisely.
10 years, 5 years…..blah, blah. How about now? The City if flush with extorted money from the taxpayer.
Obviously if they can just hand over 1 million to skip and his money pit wanna be museum without taxpayer input. Saw 2 buses from Winston Salem schools today with a lot of small kids at the money pit door just wondering how much the taxpayers paid for that trip. But that does count as attendance. What Load of CRAP
Yeah, why should kids learn outside the classroom? (Read with sarcasm) Field trips are paid by students. Not the county.
Greensboro was a major milestone in the Civil rights movement that make great strides in improving life for minority. I think it is great kids get to see that history versus read a paragraph in a book.
So why not take them to a real museum that has a great deal more history about Greensboro and not just about black history. The Greensboro Historical Museum offers a total look into the past and present of Greensboro. The best part it’s Free. But then it would not count as paid attendance to the money pit would it.
I believe you are misinformed about students paying for field trips. There is no way that bus loads would come up with their own money, especially in the current hard times.
Better come out from under your rock and look around at the real world.
Oh naive Chris. The Title I schools with free and reduced lunch find funds for kids to go on field trips. Their parents don’t pay for anything.
I didn’t want to tell chris that little tidbit of information. I have 3 black neighbors all really great people and we’ve talked about this very topic all of them have said the school pays for the admission cost. With all the money given by the taxpayers the admission should be free to school children just as is the Greensboro Historical Museum. It’s a much better museum to visit
They could cut they budget to match the current emergency fund value. Just sayin’.
To tell the truth, all this situation seems to me very twofold and ambiguous because there are no reasonable arguments. I think that it is more proper to eliminate the deficit this year by using ARP because it will bear neccesery fruits and will be a really smart decision. From my point of view, it will entail necessary changes and will solve current problems, but, of course, I can’t know for sure. I think that we need to rectify the issue not in ten or five years, but much more efficiently. From my point of view, we have all neccesery resources for this and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility. Anyway, everything needs to be realized in the most favorable way and on welfare of the city and people, developing a smart thoughtful strategy.