News

How county commissioners added $17.6 million to the budget

Drivers of the 4.3-cent property tax increase include, clockwise from top left, $9 million in debt service for the $170 million courthouse-jail construction, a $4 million increase in pay for sheriff’s deputies and jailers, $50,000 for a Fletcher library feasibility study and a $1.2 million increase for the local teacher supplement. [PHOTOS BY AMY MCCRAW, DYLAN SHEEHAN, HENDERSON COUNTY SCHOOLS]

By AMY B. MCCRAW and BILL MOSS, Published: June 9, 2026

Proud of their fiscal rectitude, Henderson County commissioners have routinely managed to adopt a balanced budget without raising taxes — even when funding big projects like the Hendersonville High School construction or facing an unexpected catastrophe like Hurricane Helene.

This year, the hold-the-line practice could not hold.

Commissioners voted last week to raise the property tax rate by 10% to fund a $244.8 million budget that includes pay raises for sheriff’s deputies and teachers, covers the first year of debt service on the courthouse and detention center building project, by far the biggest capital project in county history, and pays for other projects large and small.

“If law enforcement doesn’t protect you and you are dead, it doesn’t matter how good a library you have,” Michael Edney, the board’s vice chair, said shortly before the unanimous vote to raise the tax rate by 4.3 cents — from 43.1 to 47.4 cents per $100 of property valuation.
Other board members also defended the tax increase ahead of their vote capping a marathon five-hour meeting at the Historic Courthouse.
“I’ll not buy one of those fancy coffees I like to have,” Commissioner Rebecca McCall quipped, explaining that the tax increase will cost the owner of a $400,000 home an extra $4 per week.
Commissioner Jay Egolf said the board had talked about a 5-cent tax increase after hearing a presentation recently on financing the county’s $170 million Judicial Center and Renovation 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. How commissioners pushed a no-new-taxes balanced budget from $227 million to $249 million is a story of wish lists large and small and a more sound approach to long-term debt management.

Here’s how the plus-plus-plus happened:

Courthouse-jail debt

Although Mitchell’s recommended budget used the capital reserve fund to pay the $9 million JCAR debt service, commissioners balked at that.  Because debt service is recurring, not a one-time expense, commissioners insisted that it needed to be covered by recurring revenue. That decision added $9.12 million to the budget but it also preserved the capital fund for future unanticipated expenses, or just to sit in the bank and draw interest.

The money required for the debt service also must 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, a former Fletcher Town Council member and strong advocate of a new Fletcher library branch, said she feared depleting the county’s capital reserve would prevent the county from funding other capital projects in the future.

“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 when this new debt service is a huge issue.”

Commissioners funded a quarter of the $17.6 million add-on by abandoning their self-imposed policy of setting aside at least 12 percent of the general fund in a rainy-day fund. Ratcheting that down to 10 percent allowed them to grab $4,080,050 from the reserves. Had they not done that, the tax increase would have been closer to 6 cents.

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

Lion’s share goes to public safety

Crime doesn’t pay. It costs — a lot.

If it weren’t for crime, the county could sail along with no tax increases at all. Fully three-quarters of the extra $17.6 million is public safety related: $9 million for the courthouse-jail mortgage and $4 million for the sheriff’s office pay increase.

Taxpayers can again thank, or blame, state politicians for that.

The balanced budget Mitchell presented in early May included a 3% across-the-board cost of living bump. Since then, leaders of the state legislature in Raleigh announced a deal on a budget that funds pay raises ranging from 17 to 20 percent for state law officers —SBI agents, Highway Patrol troopers, prison guards and others.
In response, in part, to the hefty state pay raise  — and also in response to the exorbitant housing costs in the county — Sheriff Lowell Griffin requested an 18% pay increase for his employees.

Contextually, though, the sheriff’s pitch was not unrelated to the $170 million courthouse-jail project commissioners green-flagged just three months ago.

“If we’re going to invest in anything in this county, we have to continue to invest in our people,” Griffin told commissioners in a budget workshop on May 20. “Without the people, there’s no use to have the buildings, there’s no use in having the equipment.”
Commissioners agreed law enforcement pay in the county needs to be competitive with other nearby communities so the sheriff can hire and keep the best officers.

While commissioners volleyed the idea of a broader pay study analyzing salaries countywide, they ultimately decided that the law enforcement raises were needed now.

When Griffin last month mentioned seven school resource officer vacancies, Lapsley was persuaded.

“The sheriff it seems to me is in real awkward position here to fill those vacant positions before the coming school year,” Lapsley said last week. “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 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 makes sense.”

Schoolteacher pay

For years, education supporters have appeared during the annual budget hearing to implore commissioners to increase the local supplement, the amount the county pitches in to bump salaries up. Commissioners have routinely listened, routinely ignored the pleas. Until this year.

Commissioners agreed to a 1% supplemental pay increase for public school teachers at a cost of $1.2 million.

Here, too, commissioners cited the importance of keeping the school system competitive with surrounding communities.

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

Lapsley and Edney both favor a longevity pay increase for teachers who have served the school system for years.

“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.”

Other add-ons

Even in a $245 million budget, the little things add up.

Besides covering the teacher supplement, the budget also appropriates an additional $1.9 million for local schools’ current expense, $50,000 for a Fletcher library conceptual study and $1 million to cover increased landfill/recycling center costs.

One X factor — a big one, considering that it’s more than the total $17 million in add-ons — is the $20 million FEMA still owes the county for its response to Hurricane Helene. The county continues to work with the federal agency to receive reimbursement for expenses during the hurricane, Mitchell said.

As they draft budgets for adoption by June 30, city and county leaders across the state are grappling with numerous challenges percolating through the legislative pipeline in Raleigh — a potential pause in real property revaluations and a constitutional amendment capping property taxes among them.

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