Buncombe County’s 2026 fiscal year budget introduces a property tax increase on homeowners and businesses and an additional tax hike for the Asheville City Schools district, while staving off previously anticipated cuts to local education.
Well over 200 people marched to Buncombe County’s College Street offices Tuesday, culminating their monthslong push for more local government spending for K-12 schools.
In a 5-2 vote, the Buncombe Board of Commissioners approved a nearly $624 million budget that didn’t satisfy the education advocates’ requests. But the upcoming fiscal year’s spending on local schools keeps funding the same as last year and avoids the $4.1 million in cuts planned in County Manager Avril Pinder’s initial budget proposal.
“I’m proud of where we landed tonight. We fought for every fraction of a penny, with less of an increase in the tax rate than was initially proposed,” said board Chair Amanda Edwards after casting her vote for the budget.
Buncombe property taxes will increase by 5.6%, to a rate of 54.66 cents per $100 in assessed value. That works out to a bill of $1,913 for a home valued at $350,000, up about $102 dollars from last year. The first draft of the budget had set the rate at 55.02 cents. County officials arrived at the smaller increase by delaying a contribution to employee retirement benefits.
Property owners in the Asheville City Schools district will face an additional 3.6% increase in the supplemental tax they pay for the K-12 system. The tax rate will go up to 11 cents per $100 in assessed value. Many education advocates had lobbied for a 12-cent rate.
“Increasing our taxes with the ask of two additional cents … is still providing our children with bare bones,” said Liza Kelly, a member of the Asheville City Board of Education. “It is not overstaffing our schools; it is the bare minimum to have a profound impact on our children.”
Commissioners instead opted to pair a smaller ACS tax increase with a reallocation of existing sales tax revenue previously earmarked for school capital projects. State law currently prohibits the use of that money for operating expenses, explained county Budget Director John Hudson, but two bills under consideration at the General Assembly would give Buncombe the needed flexibility.
Vice Chair Martin Moore and Commissioner Parker Sloan voted against the budget. Sloan, who supported a higher tax increase for more ACS funding, argued that Buncombe’s financial gymnastics would leave the county with little flexibility in the case of future economic turmoil.
Citing the risk of a recession due to federal trade policy, Sloan said, “This budget puts us in a vulnerable place, and it puts the schools in an extraordinarily vulnerable place.”
Although Commissioner Drew Ball supported the budget, he agreed with Sloan that local schools ultimately need more stable backing. He pointed to what he called inadequate education support from state legislators, who have failed to fund a more than $5 billion plan for K-12 schools ordered by the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2022. Analysis by Every Child NC, a coalition of state nonprofits, suggests the plan would increase annual state funding for ACS and Buncombe County Schools by roughly $10 million and $46.4 million, respectively.
Other tidbits
- The county will pass through over $2.5 million in federal grant funds to Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministries for Recovery House, a 64-unit transitional housing project planned for the nonprofit’s Transformation Village. Rev. Scott Rogers, ABCCM’s executive director, says the nonprofit has so far raised about $4.5 million toward the project’s estimated $6 million price tag.
- Buncombe’s Sustainability Office received a $225,586 grant from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to install battery storage at the county’s 35 Woodfin St. offices. Through better harnessing energy from the building’s solar panels, the system is projected to eventually save the county more than $589,000 in electricity costs.
Every first and third Tuesday, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners meets at 200 College Street, Room 326, in downtown Asheville, beginning at 5 p.m. See the full recording and agenda of the June 3 meeting.
