Burton
At a Monday budget workshop with the Sampson County Board of Commissioners, Finance Officer Melissa Burton talked about property taxes, noting that $43 million is the projected property tax revenue for fiscal year 2024-25. Burton said the total included penalties and interest.
Burton was laying a road map of sorts for commissioners, helping paint them a financial picture as they enter discussions about the 2025-26 budget and the county’s current finances.
The current property tax rate for Sampson County is 62 cent per $100 valuation, with an effective tax rate of 60 cent per $100 valuation. The effective rate is how far tax money can go in the current financial climate compared to when the rate was established, due to rising costs of expenditures. The taxable property valuation per capita, here in Sampson County, averages $88,844 per property item. This includes buildings, vehicles and any item that requires yearly tax payment.
Sampson County ranks 86 out of 100 counties for property valuation in North Carolina, and 66 out of 100 in property tax bill averages, at $733 per taxable property.
Sales tax revenue makes up the other majority of the funds collected by the county, along with lease and rental fees, fines, detention fees for housing state and federal prisoners, and other grant money to complete the budget, Burton explained The current sales tax rate is set at seven percent with 2.22 percent of that being Sampson County’s sales tax rate.
“Even though we’ve only received five months of sales tax data, we are comfortable increasing the fiscal year projection, up three quarters of a million,” Burton told commissioners Monday evening, reminding them this is only a projection and is not set in factual data.
As for lease and rental fees, Burton noted, “we are comfortable increasing projected totals by $300,000.”
Burton also mentioned that detention revenue had decreased due to “a slight decline of state and federal prisoners available to be housed at this time.”
Appropriated fund balance drastically increased for the 2024-25 fiscal year, from a little over $4.8 million last fiscal year 2023-24 to over $11.5 million for the current year.
“This not sustainable,” Burton said to the board. “It cannot be done again.”
Burton reminded the board while the $11.5 million has been allocated for the appropriated fund balance, the actually amount used will not be tallied until the end of the fiscal year.
“Fund balance is the accumulated amount of revenues over expenditures that has built up over time., explained Burton. “Counties are legally required to maintain an available fund balance of eight percent of general fund expenditures. When you appropriate fund balance, you are authorizing the use of these accumulated funds to fund expenditures in the coming budget.”
According the N.C. General Assembly statutes, it is calculated by subtracting liabilities, encumbrances, and deferred revenues from the sum of cash and investments.
“The sum of estimated net revenues and appropriated fund balance in each fund shall be equal to appropriations in that fund. Appropriated fund balance in a fund shall not exceed the sum of cash and investments minus the sum of liabilities, encumbrances, and deferred revenues arising from cash receipts, as those figures stand at the close of the fiscal year next preceding the budget year,” states Chapter 159, Article 3 of The N.C. General Assembly statutes.