The Town of Chapel Hill Council met Wednesday, May 1 for its regular business meeting, with the primary goal being consideration of the budget for fiscal 2024-25.
The proposed budget totals $156,259,106, a 4% increase from the prior year’s budget.
The new budget also calls for a two-cent increase in the tax rate, raising it to a total rate of $0.592.
“I’m concerned about the cumulative impacts on this community and the general affordability for people to be here,” said Mayor Pro Tem Amy Ryan on the proposed tax increase. “There’s not an easy answer to that but I want to make sure that as we move forward, we really understand what sustainability means.”
There will be a public hearing on the budget at the council’s May 15 meeting.
“This budget, for me, says that we believe in ourselves, we have hope for tomorrow and we are not going to fix it all, but we are confident,” said Councilmember Camille Berry.
Moving on to other business, the council also approved a text amendment to the stormwater management requirements to implement greater regulations in regards to increased precipitation frequency and intensity being experienced as a result of climate change.
The text amendment clarifies the volume requiring treatment, adds 100-year standard and 24-hour storm event to peak rate requirements and will apply these to conditional zoning and major special use permits,
Finally, the council approved an updated traffic calming policy.
“Staff’s primary goal for this update was to make the process more data-driven than complaint-driven,” said Mobility and Greenways Manager Bergen Watterson. “We wanted to take the onus off of residents and have it be more of a staff-driven process” and the policy would also include a visual appendix of traffic calming features to make it easier to understand.
“The old policy was really reactive to resident’s complaints and concerns. Once the complaint was received, the resident had to get wet signatures from two-thirds of the residents in the identified service area and once we received that petition, it would kickstart the data collection process,” said Watterson. “There’s now no petition process for the residents and in the new policy, there’s very clear thresholds for review.”
The new policy will focus more on traffic circles, chicanes and bump outs and will mostly do away with speed humps and tables.
In other business, the council met on April 26 and May 3 in order to further discuss a potential bond referendum package.
After discussion, the council landed on a goal to bring a $50.5 million bond referendum, the most that can be brought forth without raising taxes, before voters on the Nov. 2024 ballot.
“In fiscal year 2009, the town established a debt fund as a best practice to manage our debt,” said business management director Amy Oland. “It’s essentially a dedicated source of revenues, currently 8.8 cents of our tax rate, that we can count on to make our existing debt service payments and to build a capacity to take on more debt in the future.”
Of the $50.5 million, $6.5 million will go towards police, fire and parking expenses and the remaining $44 million will be split across a number of categories that voters can show support for.
The referendum would also be distributed over three issuances: $10-15 million in 2025, 2027 and 2029/2030.
It’s important to note that neither meeting was a formal business meeting so no official action has been taken or approved in regards to the referendum bond.
The Chapel Hill Town Council will next meet May 15.