Rising personnel costs dominate Elon town manager’s proposed $10.9 million fiscal year 2025 budget, which the town council plans to debate during a work session April 15.
Though the overall budget is up only 2% from last year, town manager Richard Roedner is proposing a 7.4% increase in personnel costs, largely driven by increases from public work, downtown and administration. Elon’s $2.4 million police personnel budget would stay flat under the proposal. The town’s total personnel budget would increase by $462,315 to $6.7 million.
Mayor Emily Sharpe said one of the main topics for the council to discuss was opening new proposed positions for different departments; she said she expects discussion about whether these new roles would be necessary.
“I think that’s something that we have to look at and prioritize and understand,” Sharpe said. “Is that something that we need at the town level, or is it something that we can contract out, or do we need to look at changing the way that some of our staff people do their jobs so that they can better meet the priorities of the council?”
Roedner said the budget was made to keep goals in mind set by the town’s department heads, as well as the budget councils crafting their funding plans. In order to do this, Roedner said he met with the department heads and compiled their requests into the proposed budget — later making further adjustments after meeting with the Budget Liaison Committee.
Roedner also said some of the issues the proposal aimed to address were catching up on capital infrastructure needs — including vehicles and communications equipment for the police and fire departments, as well as site planning and engineering for the new police department location.
“This is a multi-year process to catch up on replacement and upgrade to get to a point where regular investments will keep us current in the future,” Roedner said. “Catching up is always expensive up front, but once accomplished, it is easier to maintain.”
Roedner presented the budget during the council’s meeting on March 25, but council members said little about the proposal as per his request to hold off comments or questions until they’ve looked into his recommendations. Sharpe said that the proposed budget meets many of the goals that the council had when it came to making the budget, such as ensuring that people are being paid at a competitive rate.
“I think that generally, what the team has worked on is really good and aligned to our strategic priorities in town,” Sharpe said. “But just some small tweaks, I think, will be happening.”
Roedner’s proposal specifically notes “issues to be addressed,” by the council, including funding requests from the nonprofit organizations of United Way and Alamance Arts.
“We’ll see where the whole council lands on that,” Sharpe said. “But I just think that with a town of our nature, where we have nonprofit entities within it that have larger budgets than us, it’s hard for me to say that that’s where we should be spending our taxpayers’ money. Because taxpayers can go and fund nonprofits however they wish.”
The largest nonprofit in the town, Elon University, is mentioned in the budget by way of contributions being made to the town. Under the proposal, the university would provide the town a general fund subsidy of $8,000, a contribution to the police department of $15,198, a contribution to the fire department of $86,598 and a contribution to the downtown development position of $51,002. Altogether, the $160,754 in contributions from the university would be a 6% increase from the previous fiscal year.
After the work session on April 15, the council will then have public hearings on the budget on May 14 for any other comments or recommendations before finally taking a vote on the budget by June 12.