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County Commissioners Reject Proposed FYS 2022-23 Budget in 3-2 Vote

By Zack Hill

The Watauga County Commissioners rejected the proposed fiscal year 2022-23 county budget by a vote of 3-2 in a tense meeting Tuesday night. Commissioners Ray Russell and Charlie Wallin voted in favor of approval with chair Larry Turnbow and commissioners Braxton Eggers and Todd Castle voting against.

“I have a lot of problems with the budget,” Turnbow said. “There are a lot of things I’m not happy about so I’m not supporting this budget at all. I’m more than willing to have another emergency work session and listen to our enlightened and very astute commissioners to come up with the money for everything we’d like to do with this budget.”

The budget for the county landfill and transfer station as well as money for law enforcement and first responders were often mentioned as issues dissenting commissioners felt needed more work.

“There’s a lot of things in this budget I like,” Eggers said. “I’m pro-education. The cost of living increase [for county employees] is good. But the dump budget I keep coming back to it.”

“I’d like to see the sheriff’s office get more overtime pay. I agree with education and cost of living increase. The other stuff, I don’t know if I can get behind that.”

Castle echoed Eggers’ comments about the increase in tax on residents for solid waste disposal but only one additional day for the dump to be open to the public. 

He said he campaigned on a platform of schools, medical expansion and support of law enforcement and first responders and “see elements in this budget that do this.”

“There are areas where I thought we fell short,” Castle said. “I spoke with a few people I represented and others, and people are not happy with hazard pay for law enforcement and the landfill situation.”

Voting in favor of approval, Wallin said “we worked hard on the budget and there’s a lot in there that I’m disappointed in as well. All of us could have presented anything at any time to change issues and bring up issues.”

Wallin said that he was concerned that the money for the board of elections might not be enough given N.C.’s new voter ID laws, another common theme in the commissioners’ comments, but was voting in favor “to make sure we stay funded and active and all departments are funded.”

Russell, who also voted to approve, said “there’s no budget that’s perfect and we certainly wish there were more money available. There are a lot of needs. But the best we can do is allocate among all the interests we have here.”

“If I have any regret, I feel like in a lot of cases we were not able to make the investment into addressing root causes for a number of problems—early childhood development, affordable housing—so I do hope we can work on the policy side of those issues even where we’ve not be able to put more dollars there quite yet.”

North Carolina General Statute stipulates counties must adopt a budget by June 30. The commissioners moved to hold an emergency budget work session on June 21 and 22. A meeting is scheduled for approval of that budget for June 22 at 5:30 p.m.

The High Country Press will continue to follow this story.