Mariel Williams
editor@mitchellnews.com
The Mitchell County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a $25.3 million budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year last week.
Commissioners met Tuesday, June 25 in a special session specifically to vote on the budget. County Finance Officer Mavis Parsley said that formulating the coming year’s budget had gone smoothly.
“I want to say thanks to you guys for a wonderful budget season — I think it went really well,” Parsley said. “We didn’t have to make any last-minute changes, so that was good.”
Parsley said that in recent years special projects and grants have made the budget slightly more complicated.
“You’ll see [the budget ordinance] has gotten a little longer in the last few years,” Parsley said. “I think this is from all the different projects and funds we’ve got going on right now.”
The county’s general fund totals $25,355,627, and the tax rate is staying steady at 56 cents per $100 of property valuation.
The commissioners praised Parsley for clearly explaining all the expenses and revenues to the board.
“I think you were pretty thorough with it,” Commission Chair Harley Masters said.
Parsley described this year’s budget process as “pretty routine.” County Manager Allen Cook praised the finance department for their work.
“Our finance staff — it’s ‘pretty routine’ for a reason — they were able to get in there and work in the trenches, figure it out, come up with ways to make ends meet,” Cook said. “So, I do want to put special thanks out to Mavis, Christy [Young] and Allisyn [Smith].”
Cook also said the commissioners have been very helpful in putting together a budget that everyone could agree on.
“And of course this board, they gave us the input to do the budget — you all were there, you were present, you weighed in,” Cook said.
After the budget vote, Parsley gave the board an update on sales tax revenue.
“We got April sales tax last week and Mitchell County is holding really well, really strong on sales tax, whereas other parts of the state have already started to see a pretty dramatic decline,” Parsley said.
In general, Parsley said, this region has had better recent sales’ numbers than the state as a whole.
“We’re one of the few that is still — Western North Carolina is still doing really well with sales tax,” Parsely said. “I’m thankful for that, and because of that I think we’re going to come in a little bit stronger on this year’s budget than back in January and February that I was thinking we were going to come in.”
Parsley said she was still waiting on May and June sales tax numbers to close out the 2023-24 budget.
“Usually those are our stronger months,” she said. “So, I’m hoping we won’t see the decline yet.”