Buncombe County projects $41M budget gap

The city of Asheville isn’t alone in dealing with a substantial gap between expenses and revenues for the next fiscal year. During an April 16 budget work session, Buncombe County officials estimated that general fund revenue for fiscal 2026-27 would run about $41.1 million short of county government spending without a property tax increase.

Buncombe’s projected expenses of $487.1 million are lower than the initial estimate of $504 million shared in March. Budget Director John Hudson said the county had managed to find savings through lapsed salaries, operations cuts, and eliminating five of the 37 new staff positions that county departments had requested.

Those expenses, however, are still about $49 million higher than Buncombe’s current budget year. And Hudson projected that county revenues would only go up by about $8.5 million overall without an increase to the effective property tax rate.

While Buncombe officials didn’t estimate what the tax rate would need to be to cover the gap, BPR calculated that figure based on currently available budget information. If the county relied solely on property taxes for additional revenue, not dipping into its fiscal reserves, the rate would work out to 44.57 cents per $100 of assessed property value, roughly 13.6% higher than the revenue-neutral rate of 39.22 cents per $100. For a $500,000 home, the property tax bill would increase by about $268.

Buncombe is unlikely to use its fund balance to cover the budget gap, given that those fiscal reserves already sit below the county’s policy target. Other sources of local government revenue, such as sales taxes and transfers from the state or federal government, largely lie outside of the county’s control. Property taxes are the main way county governments in North Carolina raise money.

For Asheville taxpayers, any increase to the county property tax could be paired with a city tax hike of roughly 19%, or $311 on a $500,000 home. Asheville education officials have also requested a nearly 23% increase for the supplemental tax levied on properties within the Asheville City Schools district, equivalent to about a $93 increase on a $500,000 home.

Buncombe’s next budget work session takes place Tuesday, April 28. The Board of Commissioners will then receive the county’s proposed budget document, including the proposed property tax rate, Tuesday, May 5. A public hearing on the budget will take place Tuesday, May 19.

Commissioners approve unified fire tax district

Many Buncombe residents will also see changes to the property taxes they pay for fire protection. At their April 21 meeting, the County Commissioners approved a plan to create a unified fire tax district, which will replace the current system of separate tax rates for 20 different fire service districts across unincorporated areas and Biltmore Forest, Montreat, and Woodfin.

As previously reported by BPR, fire officials believe the new approach will help rural fire departments be more financially sustainable and improve their response times. Rafael Baptista, Buncombe’s director of strategy and innovation, said April 21 that the move could also help attract more firefighters by supporting higher salaries.

Although county staff won’t formally propose a tax rate for the unified district until May 5, Baptista noted that fully funding the requests of Buncombe’s fire departments would require a rate of 14.45 cents per $100 — roughly 57% higher than the revenue-neutral rate, equivalent to an average increase of about $263 for a $500,000 home.

However, the actual impact on tax bills could look substantially different depending on a resident’s location. The current fire tax rate in Skyland, for example, is 9.8 cents per $100, while that in Barnardsville is 22 cents per $100. Therefore, the owner of a home in Skyland would see a much larger effective tax increase under the unified district rate than would the owner of a similarly valued home in Barnardsville.

Commissioner Jennifer Horton was the only board member to vote against the unified district. (Commissioner Parker Sloan was absent.) Speaking with BPR after the meeting, Horton said she wasn’t comfortable supporting the plan without understanding its true impact on taxpayers, especially in light of Buncombe’s recent property value reassessment.

Other tidbits

• Commissioners unanimously approved a package of tweaks to Buncombe’s flood damage prevention ordinance. The new rules prohibit the placement of travel trailers in the floodway, along with the temporary storage of junked vehicles and “floatable materials” like mulch.   
• The board adopted a resolution in support of the “roadless rule,” a U.S. Forest Service regulation that prohibits logging and road construction in many national forest areas. Local conservation groups, including MountainTrue and the Pisgah Area Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association, have said federal efforts to rescind the rule could endanger Western North Carolina destinations such as the Craggy Mountains, Laurel Mountain, and Tusquittee Bald.
• The county accepted over $1.86 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. About $957,000 will support the administration of property buyouts under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Another $481,000 will pass through to Trinity Baptist Church in West Asheville as reimbursement for shelter operations during Hurricane Helene, while $424,000 will reimburse local emergency services for contributing to urban search and rescue.
• Buncombe declared April to be Food Waste Reduction Month. The proclamation noted the county’s goal to divert 900 tons of compost from the landfill by 2030. That represents about 5% of the roughly 18,000 tons of food waste entering the landfill each year, as estimated by a 2022 study of the county waste stream.

Every first and third Tuesday, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners meets at 200 College St., Room 326, in downtown Asheville, beginning at 5 p.m. The board’s next regular meeting will take place Tuesday, May 5.

See the full recording and documents from the April 21 meeting.