STONE HARBOR – Stone Harbor Administrator Jill Gougher used the Aug. 7 borough council work session to share with the governing body a possible approach to dealing with the high and recurring expenses associated with beach and bay maintenance.
This has become an especially important issue in the borough following a dredging project that dealt with a decade’s accumulation of dredge soils and a beach replenishment effort complicated by unexpected limitations on the use of federal funds for sand borrow areas in Hereford Inlet.
The maintenance of the beaches and bay are essential to the character and safety in the borough. The past year demonstrated that expenses related to the crucial tasks are high and vulnerable to unexpected increases. How to plan?
What Gougher proposed was the establishment of a dedicated fund and a scheduled set of increases in the municipal tax rate that would direct monies into that fund.
No fund can be entirely out of the reach of the governing body, but Gougher’s use of the dedicated fund would mean that even council could not redirect the monies for other use without going through the onerous and very public process of an ordinance adoption, requiring among other measures, a public hearing.
Gougher told council that she felt the special fund should accumulate a $6 million balance. She said the recommended balance then should be maintained through replenishment when funds are used for beach and bay projects.
The revenue for the decided fund would come from a special add-on to the normal process that produces an annual municipal tax rate. Gougher proposed that a $0.01 addition to the tax rate be scheduled for 2020, an additional $0.01 in 2022 and again in 2024.
These scheduled increases would be dedicated to the creation and replenishment of the special fund and would provide property owners with advanced knowledge of the tax burden for beach and bay maintenance.
The special tax rate addition and the dedicated fund would be separate from the normal budget process and would have no involvement in the annual municipal tax rate that comes out of that budget process.
The scheduled $0.01 increase for the dedicated fund would also free that annual budget process from the unexpected disruption caused by the sudden emergence of high beach maintenance expenses.
In one example the process is a way to lessen the impact on the normal budget process that may come from vagaries of weather and the impact they can have on beach replenishment needs.
Gougher provided council with a spreadsheet that showed the impact of the proposed special tax with assumptions of an average 1 percent annual growth in borough ratables.
Consideration of the proposal is left to the council.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.
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