The first draft of Wrightsville Beach’s 2017 budget projects the town spending more than it takes in by about $1 million. While Mayor Bill Blair doesn’t anticipate a tax increase, he won’t rule out a water and sewer rate increase, since many of the biggest expenditures aim to improve the town’s water and sewer system.
Balancing the budget without increasing taxes or dipping into the town’s reserve fund will require budget cuts. The board of aldermen held its first of several budget workshops March 23 to start prioritizing how to use its projected $15 million in revenue.
Cutting down the expenditures to fit the revenue is a yearly challenge, town manager Tim Owens said.
“Every year, it seems to go over about $1 million what we can actually afford based on our current revenue streams,” he said.
Most of the biggest expenditures are in the public works department. The preliminary budget calls for $100,000 in renovations to Town Hall Council Chambers, much of which will go toward furniture, Owens said.
“That whole area is in need of upgrading … but a good portion of that is for replacing the chairs,” he said.
The draft budget also calls for improvements to the town’s water and sewer system that are expensive but necessary, Blair said. The town is still considering whether to keep running its own system or sell it to Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, but either way, Blair said, the town must fix the system.
“You can’t sell a broken car,” he said.
Poor water quality and delivery is at least partly a result of the town trying to save money in the past, “neglecting the system’s maintenance for years and not fixing stuff,” Blair added.
The upgrades might require the town to reexamine residents’ water and sewer rates. The last time rates were increased was two years ago, Blair said, and the rates are still relatively low.
“The rates have to be substantial enough to be able to maintain these systems at a reasonably high level so they don’t get in the shape they were in, which was pretty ugly,” he said.
Proposed sewer improvements include fixing lift station five, near the Channel Walk community, for $300,000. Population growth in that area has put too much strain on that station’s pumps, Owens said, and the upgrades include larger storage and more efficient pumps.
“When it’s raining really hard or during high flow, we have to route it back around the system, which is not ideal,” he said.
Town leaders will also decide whether to spend $150,000 to replace some of the town’s water meters, which read water flow and determine residents’ water usage. The meters are “older than typical,” Owens said, although he’s tested some of them recently and they appear to still work fine.
The town has already started the process, replacing 900 of the 2,700 old meters with new, automated meters.
“That takes the human error out of the meter-reading process,” he said. “You’re less likely to transpose numbers and that type of thing.”
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