Bigger Budget Not "Socialism," just Necessary, Commissioners Say
Most County Commissioners support a proposed budget funded by the first property tax increase in recent years and a bigger increase in the county's fire assessment.
BREVARD — Of the many false rumors and unwarranted accusations Transylvania County Commissioner Chase McKelvey said he has heard during the current budget season, this was the most “shocking”:
One caller, he said at the Commission’s budget workshop on Tuesday, told him that “if we go to a one-service fire district, that’s like fire department socialism and that’s a liberal mentality.”
The backlash from other commissioners was so fierce that McKelvey had to quickly remind them that the charge didn’t come from him but from a resident.
Commissioner Larry Chapman facetiously said he would have to check the definition of socialism.
“Don’t ever question my conservative credentials,” said Commission Chair Jason Chappell. “Don’t ever question about going down to socialism.”
Added Commissioner Teresa McCall, “You will not find anyone more conservative than I am.”
Yet those three commissioners, elected last year as fiscal hard-liners, have been the strongest supporters of a budget that, between the proposed property tax rate and fire levy, would leave total property tax rates 6.28 cents and about 15 percent higher than the “revenue-neutral” level.
Besides being the most contentious budget season in recent county memory, it’s also the most complicated, already the subject of four Commission discussions, with a fifth scheduled for Monday’s meeting, when commissioners will also decide whether or not to adopt the recommended new fire-service system.
That’s one complicating factor. Another is the recent completion of a once-every-four-years reappraisal of property, which resulted in a whopping 61 percent increase in the county’s tax base and jumps in some individual homeowners’ valuations exceeding 100 percent.
This is where the term “revenue neutral” comes in. It’s the levy that would be required to generate the same amount of property tax income as the current rate — 60.33 cents for every $100 of assessed property — on the now-more-valuable property.
The revenue-neutral rate is 38.37 cents. County Manager Jaime Laughter’s proposed budget would add 2.68 cents to that amount, bringing the rate of the property tax that provides most of the revenue for the general fund to 41.05 cents.
That fund would not include a supplement to fire service, as it does now, which is one reason the proposed fire assessment rate of 7 cents is more than double its revenue neutral-rate of 3.4 cents.
Other than increases designated for capital improvements, it would be the first tax increase approved in a decade, Laughter said.
On Tuesday, Commissioner Jake Dalton and McKelvey raised several questions about more recent increases and Laughter acknowledged that the Commission later voted to divert some of the money originally earmarked for a new courthouse and school upgrades to avoid a tax increase.
The current proposed increase will create a budget that covers projects and services that the Commission has been accused of neglecting.
The $81.3-million general fund includes money to finance the ongoing upgrades of the county’s school buildings, the recently completed Emergency Medical Services base and the planned new courthouse.
It slightly raises the long-stagnant local supplement paid to county teachers to match that of Henderson County.
It will also cover potential shortfalls, including a possible loss of $500,000 that the state has traditionally paid to reimburse counties for a loss of Medicaid sales tax.
Laughter said Tuesday, as she frequently has in the past, that the country has few other means of raising money other than property taxes and that nearly all the services these pay for are mandated by the state.
The increased fire assessment is needed to account for the soaring cost of trucks and other emergency equipment, and it would pay for an increase in the minimum number of paid firefighters at each district from one to four.
This means that at least one professional firefighter will be on duty around the clock, which could improve insurance ratings that would result in savings on premiums, supporters have said.
More importantly, the ready availability of at least one professional firefighter will “contribute significantly to better outcomes for those experiencing any emergency,” Allison Taylor, the assistant chief and board chair of one of the eight departments, North Transylvania Fire Rescue, wrote in an email.
Call volumes have steadily increased and many volunteer firefighters already work more than one job, she also said in the email.
They are “sacrificing family time, paid work, sleep and leisure time to ensure that all responsibilities are being covered,” she wrote. “Burnout is common.”
McCall, who served on a committee that helped develop the fire recommendations, offered an especially full-throated defense.
When this spring’s wildfires required the mobilization of all districts, some firefighters “didn’t have the basic turnout gear,” she said. “Is this what we want for our fire departments when we have the ability to have a single district that would adequately fund the fire departments?”
She also compared the recent sale of a used fire engine from one district to another to “your step child getting hand-me-downs from your child.”
One common misconception about the new system, Laughter said, is that it would change service areas. Those won’t be altered, but the funding mechanism will be.
Before fiscal year 2020, the departments depended strictly on money raised within their districts, which created wild disparities in assessments between departments in high-value areas, such as Lake Toxaway, and those with smaller tax bases, including Balsam Grove.
The Commission at the time voted to create a flat countywide assessment — currently 5.5 cents — and supplement the smaller departments with a portion of the general fund, two cents in fiscal year 2025.
This practice has been referred to in budget discussions as the “hybrid” system. It’s one of several options that will be presented next week, and McKelvey says it’s the one he favors, both because it would protect departments’ autonomy and save money for most taxpayers.
Because the general fund supplement would include contributions from property owners in the city of Brevard — the department of which is funded separately — it could result in total savings to taxpayers of about a penny, according to an earlier budget presentation.
That potential savings was reduced by about half after a presentation Tuesday included a recalculation that showed the required contribution from the general fund would be about a half-cent higher than previously expected.
Both the practice of countywide funding and the new property assessments were the subject of a comment at last week’s meeting from Steve Delaney, who owns a home on Lake Toxaway.
Though the main controversy about the county’s reappraisals in Brevard has been its impact on low-value properties, Delaney raised the opposite objection.
The Lake Toxaway Fire District saw the biggest jump in assessments of improved properties, 153 percent, according to a presentation by the county’s reappraisal manager, Chris Owen, at a Brevard City Council meeting last month.
Delaney said the initial reappraisal of his house was 167 percent higher than the price he paid for it in 2019 — $1.6 million, according to county property records. It is currently appraised for tax purposes at $3.9 million, the records show, which reflects a slight reduction after Delaney’s appeal to the county.
Such assessments are inflated, he said citing two recent sales in his neighborhood substantially lower than the new assessments.
Along with the new proposed fire levy, these high values will leave Lake Toxaway property owners essentially paying for the fire service in other districts, he said.
“There’s got to be a better way to fund these fire (districts) than bleeding one community to pay for them,” he said, to the applause of several Lake Toxaway residents in the audience.
Both Owen and Laughter have said that the appraisal was completed according to strict state guidelines to reflect the market, and they were able to produce documentation showing that they are accurate and certainly not inflated.
The average price of 63 qualified home sales county staffers examined since the start of the year is about 8 percent higher than their new appraised values, Laughter said. And this general statement, that prices are continuing to rise, was supported by Billy Harris, a local broker for Allen Tate/Beverly-Hanks Realtors.
The company’s year-end report showed the median sale price of a home in Transylvania during 2024 was $510,000, the highest in the region. During the first quarter of 2025, this figure climbed to $525,000, with the most robust segment of the market being in luxury homes selling for more than $1 million.
Commissioners have previously said during budget discussions that their biggest concern about tax increases is the impact on working and fixed-income residents.
Meanwhile, they have unsuccessfully pushed for a change in the state law to allow the county to levy higher property taxes on second homes, such as the one owned by Delaney, who said in a brief interview last week that his primary residence is in South Carolina.
Chapman pushed back on Delaney’s comments, arguing for equal fire-fighting services for all residents, no matter where they live, no matter what the value of their homes.
“Whether you own a house worth $200,000 or $2 million,” he said, “you deserve the same amount of fire protection.”
Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com
Excellent reporting, not available anywhere else.
Please keep up your invaluable work.
Decent rundown of how the County is trying to deal with their budget this year. It's a fascinating time in County Government.
Here's how I see it:
Three commissioners, who were just elected in November on a platform that I'll summarize as 'the schools and courthouse are crumbling but it ain't our fault, all government is bad, please elect me to the government, I will troll people who weren't born here and I'll never raise taxes' are, as of now, all in full-throated support of the largest county tax increase since 2019 - the year the voters forced them to raise our taxes to fix our schools (which still aren't fixed).
Besides that, all three recently-elected commissioners are also in support of switching from many distinct, community-based fire tax districts (which previously guaranteed money for individual fire departments) to a single, county-wide tax district. This single, county-wide fire tax district is not inherently a bad policy - but the county manager has not offered any sort of parallel governance improvements to determine how fire tax dollars will be distributed in the future. Essentially, county leadership gains all control over fire department budgets. Fire Chiefs around the county are understandably nervous - they've seen how the county has treated other groups that they interact with: the schools, the courts, the city, etc. In most of these cases, government WAS bad - the county government. They delay, bully and intimidate rather than work together to solve problems and help people. You can understand why fire departments might not be too excited to hand over more control to the county.
County commissioners (the people's representatives) have, so far, not inquired as to how additional oversight of these budgets could benefit the public. Fire protection and our fire departments, who largely run on volunteer labor, are deeply connected to the communities they protect. Cedar Mountain, Balsam Grove, Connestee, etc. - these aren't just fire departments, they feed the identities of our individual communities.
If the county manager really wants to move forward with the single fire tax district - open up the budgeting process. Create a citizen-led fire department finance committee. Give seats on this committee (with a vote) to citizens from each of our fire tax districts. Have their meetings in public. Create the fire department budgets in plain view of the citizens. Want more control? Fine - but add more oversight. That's the right way to do it.