The Cary Town Council unanimously passed its fiscal year 2027 budget Thursday night, capping off months of deliberation and public input following the longtime former town manager’s resignation. Here’s what to know.
The basics: The budget totals $573 million. It raises the property tax rate by 2.75 cents to 36.75 cents per $100 of assessed value. That’s Cary’s highest rate in a decade, but it’s still one of the lowest in Wake County. And it doesn’t come as a surprise: town leaders have been talking about inflation, plateauing growth, and understaffing for the past year.
To put the tax increase into perspective, town staff shared that the owners of a home worth $650,000, the median assessed value in Cary, will end up paying around $15 more per month.
Monthly solid waste fees will increase by $2 to $28 total, and utility rates will increase by 4% to around $3.08 per month for a typical household.
According to staff, about 80% of the operating budget covers essential services like police, fire, and public works. This budget includes money for 55 new positions, 33 of them in public safety and 22 in other departments.
The backlog: Just before the budget vote, mayor Harold Weinbrecht said former town manager Sean Stegall kept Cary’s tax rate artificially low during his decade-long tenure through “underinvestment and misleading forecasting.”
Correcting Stegall’s mistakes will require a few years of strategic tax increases, he said.
“The council was repeatedly presented with information suggesting a tax increase was unnecessary, when in reality, additional revenue was needed simply to sustain service levels,” Weinbrecht said. “The result has been a significant backlog of public safety and infrastructure needs.”
As a consequence of that underinvestment, Cary’s staff-to-resident ratio is the lowest in Wake County.
“What we are doing right now is bordering on abusing our employees, so we cannot continue to do that,” council member Carissa Kohn-Johnson said before the vote.
The police department is understaffed by 89 officers, Weinbrecht said. The fire department should really have two additional stations. This budget begins to fill those gaps. It also includes money for a compensation study and merit pay increases for high-performing staff.
What’s included: There are several line items in this budget that appear to be post-Stegall corrections. Cary will hire a budget director, two internal auditors, and a communications director. (Stegall dissolved the communications department several years ago, INDY previously reported.) The town will also cut $117,120 from its budget for contracted videos.
Second to adding staff, maintaining infrastructure is a top priority in this budget. It contains $2.5 million to design those two new fire stations, $3.7 million for new sidewalks around town, $9 million to continue the Carpenter Fire Station Road widening project, and $5 million for the GoCary Downtown Multi-Modal Transit Center.
One penny of the tax rate will go to affordable housing initiatives, a priority many of the council members share.
What’s left out: Like any budget, this one required sacrifices. Weinbrecht was disappointed that $3.7 million worth of sidewalk repairs didn’t make the cut. Neither did $5 million worth of road maintenance.
“Delaying road maintenance only increases long-term costs as road conditions continue to deteriorate over time and inflation continues to go up,” he said. “Even a one-year delay can result in substantially higher repair and reconstruction expenses.”
The council members ended the meeting by giving their staff a round of applause, thanking them for crafting a good budget under tough circumstances.
Here’s a link to the budget in full.
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