News

LIGHTNING EDITORIAL: Mills River, Henderson County drive off a cliff

By Bill Moss, Published: March 4, 2016

The slow-motion train wreck in Mills River would be fun to watch if the stakes were not so high.

As it stands, the divorce between Henderson County and Mills River puts the town’s homeowners at risk of a crushingly large tax increase, jeopardizes the town’s growth and threatens to end the county’s streak of job-recruiting wins.
Brinksmanship by both sides has now gone over a cliff. Fed up with what they regard as Mills River’s chorus of “gimme gimme gimme,” county leaders abruptly terminated a contract that provided a deputy for “enhanced police coverage,” a service that satisfied a state requirement as a core service a municipality must provide.
County Manager Steve Wyatt initially pulled the contract effective June 30 of this year. After an urgent appeal from Mills River Mayor Larry Freeman, Board of Commissioners Chairman Tommy Thompson agreed to a one-year stay of execution.
Now the Mills River Town Council is exploring the next step, and the small government low-tax culture of the farming community is flying out the window. Although council members publicly flogged the county for causing a tax increase, they have not yet broken the news to their citizens on how much that tax increase might be. A garbage collection contract would cost the town $700,000 to $950,000 a year — or 7 to 10 cents on the property tax bill. A police department providing 24-7 coverage 365 days a year would likely cost substantially more than that.
Why can’t town and county just get along?
The reasons are legion, and ever growing. For a long time, the county says, Mills River leaders have been kicking Henderson County in the shins while whistling their way to the bank. A year ago the county ran a report showing that Flat Rock, Mills River and Fletcher over the past 10 years benefited from $24 million in local sales tax money shifted from the county to the towns. Mills River’s share was $8.2 million. In the meantime Mills River paid $108,000 for a 40-hour-a-week sheriff’s deputy, a fraction of the true cost of 24-7 coverage, which the county estimated at $800,000. Mills River, like Flat Rock, has managed to keep taxes low by socking away a big fund balance from the sales tax.
Mills River council members argue that their residents are county taxpayers, too, but that argument does not account for the fact that residents of Fletcher, Laurel Park and Hendersonville are paying city taxes to fund their 24-7 police departments and paying county taxes as well.
Are there inequities?
Of course. The Village of Flat Rock comes under different rules because it incorporated before Mills River. It does not have to provide the “core services” that state law requires Mills River to offer.
But this fight poses a big inequity that could be avoided with a little diplomacy and a lot of pride swallowing.
If Mills River and Henderson County can’t resolve their dispute over the sheriff’s contract, both the town and county will have made victims of Mills River taxpayers, including working families, elderly homeowners on fixed incomes and the new industrial plants that officials from both governments have proudly welcomed.
It’s a train wreck, all right, and one that is going to hurt everyone in the end. This is no way to run a railroad.