![\"wake_budget_changes_graphic\"](\"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/wake_budget_changes_graphic-600x417.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFinancially, Wake County is on the upswing, but the budget is still a far cry from life before the recession.<\/p>\n
Preliminary budget numbers presented at the Wake County Commissioners retreat Friday show an $18.3 million surplus, but financial staff warned against getting too excited. There continues to be too many unknown numbers, including education expenditures, health care costs, and possible hiring.<\/p>\n
Commissioners said they want to keep property taxes at the current rate of 53.4 cents.<\/p>\n
Early projections show that \u201cnext year will have more revenue than we had this year,\u201d County Manager David Cooke told the Record.<\/p>\n
For the first time in four years, Cooke said, department heads were asked to provide a wish list of additional funding instead of a list of where they could make cuts.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Many asked for more staff as well as money to start new initiatives that have been put on the back burner.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Cooke said he\u2019s confident that once all the funding requests are received, the total will be double, if not triple the projected surplus.<\/p>\n
This would change in the following year\u2019s budget if county residents approve a school bond expected on the fall 2013 ballot. Residents would see a now-unknown tax increase in June 2014 if they approve the bond.<\/p>\n
School Bonds<\/strong> County Commissioners need to decide if they are going to put a school bond on the ballot this fall to fund capital projects, such as building new schools. The amount of this bond, and the required tax increase, hasn\u2019t been determined.<\/p>\n To get an idea of how much is needed, Cooke said the school district would like to build 26 new schools by 2016.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s nearly $1 billion right there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Increasing Revenues<\/strong> Sales tax revenue, which took the biggest hit during the economic downturn, has bounced back at about a 3 percent growth for the past few years. Financial staff project similar growth this year.<\/p>\n From fiscal year 2011 to 2012, property tax collections have increased about $10 million, from $635.3 million to $645.7 million. Financial staff is projecting $651.8 million collected in 2013 and estimating $666.3 million in 2014.<\/p>\n Building permit applications continue to be an economic indicator and were at their high of about 11,200 in 2006 and a low of about 3,500 in 2009. About 4,800 permits were filed in 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first time in years, Wake County departments get to request more money instead of deciding where to cut. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24029,"featured_media":18226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,15,23],"tags":[77],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18224"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24029"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nUnder today\u2019s tax rate, Cooke explained the county can take on an additional $100 million in debt until 2018. Anything more than that requires a tax hike.<\/p>\n
\nSales and property tax revenues and building permits are increasing, but numbers are still below where they were prior to the recession.<\/p>\n