Brunswick County Commissioners approve $313 million budget for fiscal year 2025-26

BOLIVIA, NC (WWAY) — The Brunswick County Board of Commissioners approved its fiscal year 2025-26 budget with a 3-1 vote on Monday evening.

The $313.1 million budget is a nearly 6% increase from last year’s budget, while the county’s tax rate of 34.2 cents per $100 of value will remain the same.

The extra revenue comes from the county’s growing population.

And keeping the tax rate the same was a major goal for some commissioners.

“Everybody sitting in this room knows that your gasoline and your food costs and everything else has gone up,” said vice chairman Martin Cooke. “Same thing happened with the county. We’ve been trying to keep these taxes as low as we can, and we’ve done that.”

The new budget includes about a 9% increase for the county’s school district.

However, Chairman Mike Forte was the lone commissioner who voted against the budget, saying he felt the county could have benefited from just a half-cent increase to the tax rate, which would have included giving even more money for schools.

“By not doing it, we have cut public safety, the libraries are getting their funding cut,” Forte said. “We have a funding agreement with the, with our school system for public schools. So we’re costing them roughly $800,000 that they would have gotten with a half a cent tax increase.”

Despite Forte’s concerns, Commissioner Frank Williams said the budget does provide additional financial support for a number of important aspects in the county.

“Supporting our law enforcement,” Williams said. “I think we’ve seen across the country right now, the importance of having people out there to keep us safe. I want to make sure our Sheriff’s Office has the resources that they need to do their job. Water and sewer, while that’s not from tax funds, is certainly a major part of our budget. And we’ve got a lot of infrastructure projects either currently underway or on our capital improvement plan.”

Williams said the county is already looking ahead to next year, including a possible school bond.

Commissioners also discussed staff concerns at fire departments.

He also said that’s an area they plan to look at more closely during next year’s fiscal budget planning.