Dare County has tentatively scheduled a revaluation of all property countywide for Jan. 1, 2025—just five years after it conducted its last real estate appraisal and assessment for tax purposes. This is a shocking change from the County’s customary practice.
The State of North Carolina requires all counties to conduct property revaluations at least every eight years, on an “octennial cycle.” (See N.C. General Statutes sec. 105-286) Counties may “advance” the revaluation cycle, however, if they choose.
Our records show that Dare County has observed a septennial revaluation cycle in recent years, having conducted revaluations on Jan. 1, 1998, Jan. 1, 2005, Jan. 1, 2013, and Jan. 1, 2020. It has never before scheduled a five-year cycle.
News of the County’s tentatively scheduled revaluation next year is the most significant detail uncovered by The Beacon in its review of Town Manager Cliff Ogburn’s recommended fiscal year 2024-25 budget for the Town of Southern Shores.
The recommended budget included in the Town Council’s meeting packet totals $12,795,709, an increase of $22,217 over what the Town Manager (and The Beacon) previously reported. It will be subject to a State-required public hearing at the Town Council’s regular meeting Tuesday.
The Town Council will meet at 5:30 p.m. in the Kern Pitts Meeting Room for what appears on paper to be a business-heavy agenda.
For the agenda and meeting packet, see: https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/soshoresnc-pubu/MEET- Packet-db4132f33646488b9d04fe19680873c3.pdf.
PRESENTATIONS ON AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND MILFOIL TREATMENT
Also on the Council’s busy agenda are two special presentations:
The first by Planning Board First Alternate Michael Zehner concerns residents’ interest in exploring the problem of (if, indeed, they believe there it is a problem) and potential solutions for affordable housing opportunities in Southern Shores.
The second by Dr. Rob Richardson, the Aquatic and Non-Cropland Weed Specialist at N.C. State University, concerns the noxious weed, Eurasian milfoil, which exists in Southern Shores’ canals and Ginguite Creek, and whether eradicating it with an herbicide that contains the chemical, 2,4-D, poses harm to aquatic and/or human life.
Mr. Zehner, a professional planner who has been attending meetings of the Dare County Housing Task Force, led a discussion about affordable housing at the Town Planning Board’s May 20 meeting. We encourage all property owners to listen to this discussion, which begins at the two-hour mark of the meeting and lasts just over 40 minutes. You will find the meeting video at https://www.youtube.com/@SouthernShores/streams. (We elaborate on this discussion below.)
We previously reported on the Town’s interest in treating milfoil in the canals and Ginguite Creek with a 2,4-D herbicide, 2,4-D being short for the chemical 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, which is notorious for being an ingredient in Agent Orange pesticide. Two,4-D herbicides and pesticides are currently the subject of litigation in federal court in Washington, D.C. between three non-profit environmental groups and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (See The Beacon, 5/4/24)
The Town Manager has sought an Aquatic Weed Control grant from the N.C. Dept. of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) that would permit the Town to partner with NCDEQ in a 50-50 cost-sharing milfoil treatment project. At the May 7 meeting, Mr. Ogburn presented the Town Council with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NCDEQ that it had to approve for the $40,000 treatment plan to go forward. (See The Beacon, 5/4/24.)
Only three Town Council members attended the May meeting: They voted not to take any action on treatment of the Town’s milfoil until NCDEQ conducts a territorial survey of the invasive weed in the canals and Ginguite Creek. (See The Beacon, 6/10/24.)
The Town Council will have a different MOU with NCDEQ before it on Tuesday. This one is an agreement for a $2,000 aquatic vegetation survey to be conducted by NCDEQ between June 3 and Aug. 30.
Mr. Ogburn informed the Council last month that Dr. Richardson vouched for the safety of NCDEQ’s herbicide, but as The Beacon has subsequently learned, Dr. Gavin Dehnert, an emerging contaminants scientist with Wisconsin Sea Grant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has found that treatment with 2,4-D kills young fish in freshwater lakes. Dr. Dehnert found in both laboratory and lake studies that young fish experience up to a 35 percent increase in mortality when they are exposed to 2,4-D.
We suggest that Mr. Ogburn give Dr. Dehnert a call.
GETTING BACK TO THE BUDGET
Mentioned in passing on page seven of the Town Manager’s overview message to the Town Council, Dare County’s 2025 revaluation plan jumped out at us with a consequence lacking in any of Mr. Ogburn’s requested FY 2024-25 budgetary expenditures, which essentially repeat those of FY 2023-24—with one big exception. (Mr. Ogburn asked department heads to think in terms of a two-year budget, and FY 2024-25 is the second year.)
As we have reported, the big exception is the addition of some major capital expenditures in FY 2024-25, including a $2.1 million appropriation to pay for the Trinitie/Juniper Trail Culvert Replacement project. Construction is expected to begin at the bridge in late 2024, according to the Town Manager.
Other FY 2024-25 capital expenditures requested by Mr. Ogburn include $380,000 for an addition and modifications to the Town Hall building; $290,400 for construction of a sidewalk on the west side of Duck Road (N.C. Hwy. 12) from East Dogwood Trail to Hickory Trail; and $150,000 for maintenance and repair of the existing sidewalk along Duck Road north of Hillcrest Drive.
The Town Hall addition, which has been discussed in previous Council meetings, will expand the space for records collection and storage in the Planning and Code Enforcement Department.
According to the Town Manager’s report, the cost of the sidewalk from East Dogwood to Hickory will be offset by a $118,855 grant from the Outer Banks Tourism Bureau.
The recommended budget total of $12,795,709 is an increase of $3,064,259, or 31.7 percent, over the adopted budget for FY 2023-24. After multiple budgetary amendments during the fiscal year, the actual FY 2023-24 budget was $12,005,501, according to Town data. (See The Beacon, 5/10/24.)
Town history teaches us that the adopted FY 2024-25 budget also will grow with amendments to a much larger actual budget, but so, too, will anticipated revenues.
To balance the FY 2024-25 budget, the Town Manager has proposed appropriating $2,940,988 from the Undesignated Fund Balance (UFB), which, “ideally,” Mr. Ogburn writes in his May message to the Town Council, “should be used for future projects rather than budgeted for annual operating expenses.” (The additional $22,217 requested by the Police Department for staff expenses will be covered by the UFB.)
The Town Council has resolved that $3.5 million must be kept in reserve in the UFB for emergency and disaster-relief purposes. Mr. Ogburn reports that $4,830,326 is now available for use in the FY 2024-25 budget over the reserve amount.
FY 2024-25 marks the fourth year of debt service payments for the 2022 beach nourishment project, which was budgeted at $11,325,189. The Town’s contribution to the cost is $6,065,823, which it satisfies with a special annual tax assessment levied both townwide and according to designated municipal service districts (MSD). The County contributed $4,371,401 to the nourishment project, and the remainder was made up by an NCDEQ grant.
The Town could change the tax rates for beach nourishment debt payment, as long as the required revenue is raised, but the Town Manager makes no recommendation to do so, nor does he recommend a general ad valorem tax rate increase. The property tax levied by the Town on each $100.00 of real and personal property valuation remains 23.58 cents ($0.2358).
We previously published the total appropriations requested by the Town Manager for each Town department. (See The Beacon, 5/10/24.) The only change in those totals is the $22,217 increase in the Police Department budget: from $2,409,492 to $2,431,709.
You will find the Town Manager’s recommended budget at:
https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/sites/default/files/fileattachments/town_council/ page/3159/tm_recommended_fy_24-25_budget_filed_with_clerk.pdf.
For Dare County’s notice about the proposed Jan. 1, 2025 revaluation, see: https://darenc-redesign.prod.govaccess.org/departments/tax-department/appraisal#:~:text=The%20next%20countywide%20revaluation%20is,tentatively%20scheduled%20for%20January%201%2C%202025.
DOES SOUTHERN SHORES HAVE AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROBLEM?
In the Planning Board’s discussion last month, Michael Zehner, who moved to Southern Shores in 2020 and was appointed the Second Alternate to the Board in July 2021, proposed holding “educational sessions” in town about affordable housing and encouraging people to “air their concerns” about its availability in Southern Shores.
Mr. Zehner said the then-cheapest house for sale in Southern Shores was listed at $525,000 and defined affordability as costing “no more than 30 percent of household income.”
(We know the $525k house because we were house-hunting in 2019 when it sold in July that year for $337,500. It is tiny and far from the beach. There is an even smaller house for sale now on South Dogwood Trail for a jaw-dropping $399,000. It is a remodeled, 1950s-era cottage.)
He suggested a starting point for a conversation among residents would be addressing whether people believe a problem in affordable housing exists in Southern Shores and “agreeing what the problem is.”
Mr. Zehner, who was elevated this year to First Alternate on the Planning Board, expressed an interest in being “proactive,” in taking a leadership role and embarking on a study of both the problem of, and strategies for increasing, affordable housing in Southern Shores.
He envisions a “Town initiative,” he said.
A native Virginian, Mr. Zehner came from Wellesley, Mass., in 2019 to be planning director for the Town of Nags Head. According to his online CV, he served two years, eight months, in that position and is now director of planning and community development with The Berkeley Group, a consulting firm in Bridgewater, Va., that offers local government and public agency services.
Among the five regular Board members—Mr. Zehner sits on the dais during meetings, but is not a voting member—only Jan Collins enthusiastically supported him. She, too, spoke of being proactive and addressing “what we want Southern Shores to be like in 20 years.”
The others said very little, except when the topic of accessory dwelling units arose. ADUs, which provide income to primary homeowners and potentially open up rentals to more year-round occupants, are one way to address the need for affordable housing.
For the record, while the Town of Southern Shores does not allow living quarters in accessory structures, it does permit “temporary family healthcare structures,” as defined in Town Code sec. 36-168(5), to help facilitate care to a mentally or physically impaired relative. Homeowners in Chicahauk are subject to a property association covenant that prohibits ADUs. (See The Beacon, 3/21/24.)
“From a zoning perspective,” Southern Shores Planning Director Wes Haskett explained to us earlier this year, “someone can live in an accessory structure with living space, and they can be rented, but [the structure] can’t have all of the elements that make up a dwelling unit.”
This has been interpreted in the past to mean that they cannot have ovens and other cooking appliances.
“We want to maintain what we have” in Southern Shores, said Board Chairperson Andy Ward, a longtime resident homeowner who has been critical of ADUs, “and try to be good stewards to a situation that we will never solve at this level.”
At Mr. Ward’s suggestion, the Board agreed to have Mr. Zehner speak to the Town Council about the issue. Ms. Collins suggested that he ask the Council to appoint a study committee.
The Council may wish to wait until after Dare County revalues all real property next year, and we all learn just how “affordable” the booming local housing market is.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 6/2/24
The Southern Shores Beacon 