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Winston-Salem City Budget Proposal Includes Property Tax Hike

A public hearing for the proposed city budget will take place at Monday's Winston-Salem City Council meeting. KERI BROWN/WFDD

Winston-Salem City Council is expected to vote on a new budget proposal for the next fiscal year at Monday's meeting. If it passes, taxes could be going up for homeowners.

The plan calls for a three and a half percent hike, or two cents for every $100 of taxable property. For example, a home that's valued at $150,000 dollars would see an increase of about $30 a year.

City manager Lee Garrity says the money is needed to make municipal salaries more competitive and make some updates that were delayed because of the recession.

“We deferred buying and replacing equipment and we also deferred pay raises for our employees and so now that the economy has picked up, we are seeing challenges there, but more importantly, we are losing employees to other jurisdictions,” says Garrity.

The police and fire departments would see some of the biggest investments.

Plans also include restarting a police cadet training program that ended at Forsyth Technical Community College several years ago.

Garrity says overall, 30 new city employees would be added. Some of those positions are related to maintenance costs for new buildings and projects approved by voters in a recent bond package.

The total budget proposal for the 2016-2017 fiscal year is $442 million.

Winston-Salem City Council will hold a public hearing before they vote on the measure at Monday's meeting.

 

*Follow WFDD's Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news

Keri Brown is a multi-award winning reporter and host at 88.5 WFDD. She has been honored with two regional Edward R. Murrow awards for her stories about coal ash, and was named the 2015 radio reporter of the year by the Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas (RTDNAC).Although she covers a variety of topics, her beats are environmental and education reporting.Keri comes to the Triad from West Virginia Public Broadcasting, where she served as the Chief Bureau Reporter for the Northern Panhandle. She produced stories for the state's Public Television and Radio programs and was honored by the West Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters Association for her feature and enterprise reporting.She also served as an adjunct instructor at Wheeling Jesuit University and Bethany College in West Virginia. She worked with the Center for Educational Technologies in Wheeling, WV, and other NASA centers across the country to develop several stories about the use of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts in the classroom.Keri's journalism career began at WTRF-TV 7 in Wheeling. She worked in several roles at the station, including the head assignment editor. She also was a field producer and assignment manager at WPGH-TV Fox 53 in Pittsburgh.Keri is a graduate of Ohio University. When she's not in the studio or working on a story, she enjoys watching college football with her family, cooking, and traveling.Keri is always looking for another great story idea, so please share them with her. You can follow her on Twitter @kerib_news.

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