News

Commissioners raise property taxes after 5-hour meeting

Henderson County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bill Lapsley holds up a copy the county’s proposed 2026-2027 budget during a meeting with other board members on Wednesday.

By Amy McCraw, Published: June 4, 2026

Commissioners raised taxes in Henderson County Wednesday night when they approved a $244.8 million budget that includes pay raises for sheriff’s deputies and teachers while also funding debt service to the county’s courthouse and detention center building project.

“If law enforcement doesn’t protect you and you are dead, it doesn’t matter how good a library you have,” Michael Edney, the vice chairman of the county’s board of commissioners, said shortly before the board’s unanimous vote to raise the tax rate 4.3 cents from 43.1 cents to 47.4 cents per $100 of property valuation.
The remaining board members also defended the tax increase ahead of their vote during a 5-hour meeting at the county’s Historic Courthouse on Main Street.
Commissioner Rebecca McCall said the tax increase amounts to an additional $4 per week for someone owning a $400,000 home.
“I’ll not buy one of those fancy coffees I like to have,” she said.
Commissioner Jay Egolf said the board had talked about a 5-cent tax increase after hearing a presentation recently about the county’s $170 million JCAR project that includes a jail addition and new four-story courthouse building.
“We have done what we can do to lessen this,” Egolf said. “I think we are doing a great job of managing our money.”
Commissioner Sheila Franklin said the vote was a difficult decision while Chairman Bill Lapsley said he wished the board did not have to raise taxes.
“It is what it is,” he said.
County Manager John Mitchell in May presented a $227.2 million fiscal year 2026-27 budget that kept the tax rate at 43.1 cents per $100 valuation. It included more than $9 million in debt service to the JCAR project that was paid for through the county’s capital reserve fund.
But commissioners in their vote on Wednesday decided to fund the debt service through increased property taxes instead.
When they voted no on a $100 million expansion of the courthouse in March, Egolf and Franklin said they feared the project and its millions in  debt service would lead to a need to raise property taxes.

Egolf on Wednesday night said he wanted the board to address whether the $9 million in debt service required for the upcoming year should be paid for through property taxes or the county’s capital reserve fund, which is a rainy-day fund for expenses.

The money required for the debt service will also need to be funded in the county’s budget in coming years, and Egolf said he wanted to know how the board planned to come up with the money next year and beyond.

“I want my question answered,” he said. “Is this board going to be sitting here next year, and we’re going to be having a $9 million budget issue that is not funded?”

When McCall responded that her “crystal ball rolled away,” Egolf said that he did not want to “kick the can down the road.”

“We have agreed to take on debt that we are going to have to make payments on, and right now we have figured out how to handle those payments for one year — one year,” he said.

Franklin said she did not want to deplete the county’s capital reserve fund by using it to pay the courthouse project debt service because the county has many capital projects that might need to be funded through that fund.

“There is so many. I’m not interested in emptying out the capital reserves,” she said. “It’s putting off the inevitable and putting pressure on next year’s board to vote for a tax increase next year when this new debt service is a huge issue. I think putting it off to next year is putting off the inevitable.”

McCall, in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting, said there were several issues to consider when deciding whether to raise taxes this year in anticipation of the debt service that will be owed next year.

One unknown question is what a scheduled countywide property revaluation will mean for taxpayers and the county’s budget, she said.

Money for the debt service next year could possibly have been dealt with through the revaluation, she said, while adding that property values are not expected to increase as much next year as they did during the last revaluation four years ago.

McCall also said the county also does not know what might happen to a proposal in the state’s General Assembly that would allow voters in November to decide on whether to put a cap on the property tax rate counties can impose. It also remains uncertain whether that cap could delay the scheduled revaluation.

“We don’t know what this is going to look like next year,” she said. “We don’t know if we’ll be able to go forward with the revaluation.”

McCall said the county also did not raise taxes this year as high as they might have because they decreased the amount of money kept in the fund balance from 12 percent to 10 percent.

“We kept the increase as low as we possibly could,” she said.

In the vote on Wednesday, commissioners also approved using $2 million of the capital reserve fund to cover solid waste costs in the county. That money will be spent in lieu of residents paying a $45 fee for solid waste, Mitchell said during a break in the meeting.
The budget Mitchell presented in May included a 3 percent across-the-board cost of living bump. Since then, leaders of the state legislature in Raleigh have announced a deal on a budget that delivers a big pay raise to law enforcement agencies.
In response to the state budget, Henderson County Sheriff Lowell Griffin last week requested an 18 percent pay increase, projected to cost $4 million, for sheriff’s deputies and jail guards.
The sheriff’s proposed pay package could require a property tax increase, a drawdown of the fund balance below the county’s self-imposed minimum or substantial cuts somewhere else.
Commissioners vote to raise property taxes on Wednesday funded the sheriff’s request.

They said they felt the law enforcement pay in the county needs to be competitive with other nearby communities to allow the sheriff to hire and keep the best officers.

Egolf initially said he wanted to delay the pay increase for sheriff’s deputies until the county could study the plan and to consider other county employees

But Lapsley said he wanted to approve the pay raise at the sheriff’s department because it needs to fill seven vacant school resource officer positions for the coming school year.

“The sheriff it seems to me is in real awkward position here to fill those vacant positions before the coming school year,” he said. “If we are going to do it, we need to do it now to give the sheriff the opportunity to attempt to attract good candidates for that position and others that he has.”

Egolf ultimately agreed with other commissioners to fund the sheriff’s request, joining his colleagues in the unanimous vote to adopt the budget.

He said after the meeting that the county staff will study the pay increase at the sheriff’s office and at other departments in the county.

“That’s the kind of stuff I want to take our time on,” he said. “We’re still going to study it and make sure it make sense.”

Edney also voted in favor of the pay raise after first saying he wanted to look at it later in the year. A separation allowance sheriff’s deputies receive should also be considered when thinking about pay at the department, he said.

The $4 million addition to the budget for the pay raise will amount to a large expense for some taxpayers, he said.

“Grandma and folks out on the farm don’t have as much money as some of these other folks do,” he said, adding that Henderson County has one of the lowest tax rates in the state and nation.

Mitchell said that $20 million FEMA still owes the county for its response to Hurricane Helene complicated the budget picture.
The county continues to work with the federal agency to receive reimbursement for expenses during the hurricane.
Among other jobs and projects, the budget commissioners approved also includes a 1 percent supplemental pay increase for Henderson County public school teachers totaling $1.2 million. Several people who spoke during the public comment time before commissioners began discussing the budget spoke in favor of increasing support to the school system.

Commissioners said during the meeting that they also believed the increase for teachers was needed to keep the school system competitive with surrounding communities.

The supplemental pay increase is needed to attract new teachers to the county, McCall said.

“I want us to attract those teachers that are the best of the best,” she said.

Lapsley and Edney said they favored a longevity pay increase for teachers who have served the school system for years. But the county could not afford both increases this year.

“I think long-term it’s gonna do more good. But we can’t afford to do both,” Edney said.

Lapsley agreed.

“We need new teachers, but we need to do our best to keep the ones who have been around and who have been loyal to the school system and the county and show a little loyalty back,” he said. “But we can’t do both. So, I will not push it.”

McCall said she intended to work with the county’s school board on finding a way to help teachers who are parents with the cost of child care.