PITTSBORO — Chatham commissioners adopted two resolutions honoring county employees at their Jan. 18 meeting: one regarding Finance Officer Hope Tally for her 20-plus years of service and another for the Council on Aging’s Dennis Streets, ahead of his retirement as executive director.
“Chatham County doesn’t let go of people easily, and we’re hard to get away from,” Chairperson Karen Howard said with a laugh, “so we hope this will not be the last we see of either one of you, and we promise we will be tapping you soon.”
Tally, who held multiple positions in the county’s finance office during her tenure, emotionally thanked the finance and management teams for all their work and support.
“I’m humbled by this and really appreciate it,” she said.
At the end of this month, Streets will retire from the COA, relinquishing the post he’s had since 2014 and ending a professional career advocating and providing for aging populations.
“I just want to say thank you, first of all, for this resolution and most of all for the support I’ve received since I came to the council as director back in May of 2014,” Streets told the board. “I’ve been so blessed. I’m so thankful for your support.”
The board also unanimously decided at its Jan. 14 budget retreat to proceed in making the COA a county department, at the request of the organization and in light of director Streets’ impending retirement.
Commissioners said staff could move forward with transitioning COA to a county department, which means the current COA Board of Directors will become an advisory “friends” board that would remain a nonprofit and act as its fundraising arm. The county also moved from a minimum to a partial implementation to reduce pay compression for employees.
“There’s a lot of work to be done, but I think it can happen in a pretty seamless way,” Streets told the board then.
Budget Director Darell Butts presented the 20220 second-quarter budget update to the board — something brought up briefly at the board’s retreat the week prior to plan for the county’s formal budget development for the next fiscal year.
”It was mentioned at the retreat last week, but I did want to bring the second-quarter budget update to you today. This is a slide you’ve seen quite a few times now,” he said regarding the presentation’s background slide, “and probably will continue to see until we make significant changes to this report, but just a little bit of background: this is looking at revenue and expenditures for the first six months of the fiscal year, July 1 through Dec. 31.”
The report is a high-level overview, rather than a line-by-line review, and it doesn’t include interest revenue, transfers in-or-out or the appropriated fund balance.
The report only reflects three months of sales tax data due to lag between the state’s collection and disbursement to counties, Butts said. The sales tax collection is at 39.1% of the budget, according to the report, which is slightly behind the 40.5% collection for the same time period last year.
About 38.6% of the county’s $154 million budget is reflected in the current expenditures; $19.8 million of the budget are transfer-out funds not included in the report. Of the county’s budgeted revenue, 56.5% is accounted for, according to the report (not including transfers in or the appropriated fund balance).
So far, the county has seen revenue growth in seven tax categories from the first six months in 2021, notably watershed protection (+59%) and revenue health (+47%).
The Chatham County Affordable Housing Advisory Committee also presented its 2021 Annual Report, led by Susan Levy, the committee’s chairperson. The group works to understand the county’s affordable rental housing strategy toolbox and help implement priorities, review affordable housing policies and provide feedback and input in developing additional strategies, among other things.
The committee’s top goals are to increase the number and diversity of affordable rental options, ensure rental quality and to preserve legally binding and existing naturally occurring affordable housing.
In 2021, the group continued updates to the Housing Trust Fund Application and scoring guidelines, engaged education from affordable housing developers and researched critical housing issues and solutions. The committee supported Pittsboro in its housing incentive policy with Chatham Park and provided input on the county’s new unified development ordinance (UDO).
Despite increases in affordable units last year in Chatham, Levy said the need continues to grow as Chatham County grows: approximately 2,325 affordable rental units are needed — with the gap between the number of low-income renter households and affordable units continuing to widen. For example, the presentation said, there was more than a 25% increase in low-income renter households from 2019 to 2021.
This year, the committee plans to update the Affordable Rental Housing Toolbox from 2017 and turn it into a strategic action plan, implement a process to invest Article 46 Sales Tax revenue in short-and long-term housing goals and continue to engage with the UDO-drafting process.
A longer report on this presentation and the committee’s 2021 work will be included in an upcoming edition of the News + Record.
The board also heard two legislative hearings, both of which were referred to the planning board.
The first concerned a request by the commissioners to consider amendments to the county’s subdivision regulations. The amendments would modify the definitions for major and minor subdivisions and exempt subdivisions, and add an exemption for the division of property for public right-of-way dedication for road widenings.
The second hearing, also regarding a request by commissioners, was to consider amendments to the county’s zoning ordinance — including updating a reference in the table of permitted uses to the Town of Sanford’s water in addition to the county water system, which would only apply to Moncure’s Triangle Innovation Point (TIP) advanced manufacturing park.
Finally, the board approved two requests.
The first was a legislative request from commissioners to update subdivision regulations concerning conservation and development. The second was a vote on a request for subdivision First Plat review and approval of Pyewacket, located off Jones Ferry Road and consisting of 92 lots on 128.39 acres.
After some disagreement and back and forth between commissioners and Pyewacket’s representative, Howard stressed the two parties were not adversaries, but fellow negotiators.
“We’re different teams negotiating for an outcome,” she said, “and where we land when we compromise is always better than where either one of us would go alone.”
Reporter Hannah McClellan can be reached at hannah@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @HannerMcClellan.