The fire that destroyed an oceanfront home in Southern Shores on June 18 started inside the residence, not in a grill on a wooden deck, Fire Chief Ed Limbacher said at Tuesday’s Town Council meeting after giving the Council an enthralling account of the spectacular blaze and of the jam-packed day that his firefighting corps had.
Asked by Town Councilman Rob Neilson whether a grease fire from a grill caused the fire at 150 Ocean Blvd., the Chief demurred, saying that the fire started inside the home, not on a deck. But he also observed, “I don’t think you’re ever going to know.”
Sensitive to not “sensationalizing anyone’s tragedy,” Chief Limbacher gave a precise timeline of the eight emergencies that long “unpredictable” day, which sent Southern Shores firefighters to structure fires in Colington (at 13:26, using a 24-hour format) and Corolla (at 13:33) before they responded to a call at 18:36 about the fire at 150 Ocean Blvd., which rapidly grew after a “BLEVE” occurred.
BLEVE, the Fire Chief explained, is an acronym for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion, a type of explosion that occurs when a vessel containing a pressurized liquid ruptures after a rapid increase in temperature and pressure. A “weak spot” in the tank blows out, he said.
A BLEVE occurred at 150 Ocean Blvd. after a 250-pound propane tank ruptured and exploded, according to the Chief, who showed a cell-phone video shot by a bystander that captured the explosion’s intense effects on the fire and a photograph of the ruptured tank.
It was fortunate that no firefighters were inside the residence when the BLEVE occurred, having worked outside to contain the fire to the one structure after learning that one of its walls had already partially collapsed.
Had anyone gone inside to look for occupants—firefighters were advised the house was unoccupied—a human tragedy beyond property loss may have occurred.
“Uncertainty is what makes this job really, really dangerous,” Chief Limbacher emphasized.
The air temperature at the time of the fire was 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and a 10-mile-per-hour wind was blowing, he said, compounding the challenge and the risk to firefighters.
The Fire Chief also stressed the close cooperation that the Southern Shores Fire Dept. has with the Southern Shores Police Dept., whose officers arrive to secure a scene ahead of the firefighting equipment. (Police Chief David Kole did not attend the Town Council meeting.)
(The Beacon reported on 6/18/25 and 6/19/25 that witnesses to the fire heard or saw an explosion after the blaze had started. One witness placed the time of what we know now was a BLEVE at 7 p.m.; the person who shot the video described two such explosions.)
We commend to you Chief Limbacher’s presentation, which you may view on the town’s You Tube website within the video for the July 8 Town Council meeting. His reports for May and June begin around the five-minute mark of the You Tube video, and his presentation for June 18 starts around the eight-and-a-half-minute mark.
The Chief also reported Tuesday that his department responded to fire alarms on 9th Avenue (15:44) and 15 Ocean Blvd. (18:25) in town that long June day, as well as two EMS calls and one medical call.
Interviews for the four newly created positions of SSFD captain will be held next Tuesday, he said.
Both Southern Shores Mayor Elizabeth Morey and Councilwoman Paula Sherlock filed their Notices of Candidacy today at the Dare County Board of Elections in Manteo for re-election on Nov. 4. Their current four-year terms on the Town Council expire in early December.
As The Beacon reported on 7/5/25, today was the first day that candidates could file to run for municipal office in Southern Shores, as well as in Duck, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, and Manteo. At least one candidate filed in all six towns.
The only contested election so far is that of mayor of Manteo. Town Commissioners Betty Govan Selby and Tod Branch Clissold have filed to succeed Mayor Sherry Wickstrom, whose term expires in December.
Ms. Selby, who also serves as Manteo’s mayor pro tem, and Mr. Clissold each have two more years remaining on their Commission terms.
The Notice of Candidacy filing period runs until noon on Friday, July 18. (See The Beacon, 7/5/25, for more details.)
For a list of the candidates who have filed so far for the 2025 non-partisan municipal elections, see:
. . . for Dare County municipal offices is just four months away, Nov. 4.
Candidate filing for Dare County’s non-partisan municipal elections in November begins on Monday at 8:30 a.m. and closes on July 18 at noon. Two offices will be contested in Southern Shores, those of mayor and a Town Council member, each of which has a four-year term.
The terms of Mayor Elizabeth Morey and Town Councilwoman Paula Sherlock, who were elected in November 2021, are expiring. Neither has announced she is running for reelection, but we would expect each to do so.
Four years ago, Mayor Morey, who was then serving on the Town Council, filed her candidacy for mayor on the first day of the filing period. Ms. Sherlock filed on the last day.
Unlike in Duck, where the terms of all five Town Council members expire in the same year, Southern Shores staggers the terms of its five Council members, electing two, including the mayor, in one election and the other three in an election two years later.
Any person who is at least 21 years old, registered to vote in North Carolina, and qualified to vote in the municipality in which he/she runs for office as of the date of an election may file a Notice of Candidacy, with the requisite fee, with the Dare County Board of Elections in Manteo.
THE TOWN COUNCIL will hold its regular monthly meeting Tuesday, 5:30 p.m., in the Pitts Center—a week later than usual because of the Independence Day holiday.
According to the agenda, Town Manager Cliff Ogburn will give an update on the 2027 beach nourishment project, and the Town Council will make three Planning Board appointments and one appointment to the Historic Landmarks Commission.
The three-year term of Planning Board member Tony DiBernardo, who has served as vice-chairperson, has expired, and he has elected not to seek another term. First Alternate Michael Zehner will be appointed to Mr. DiBernardo’s seat, and Second Alternate Charles Ries will be elevated to First Alternate.
Two members of the community have submitted applications for appointment to the Second Alternate’s position. They are Natalie Painter and Richard Filling. Planning Director Wes Haskett has submitted their applications to the Town Council, without recommendation, asking it to choose.
Planning Board member Jan Collins’s three-year term expired June 30. She has requested re-appointment for another term.
Mr. Haskett has recommended the appointment of Jennifer Adams-Falconer to the Historic Landmarks Commission to fill a vacancy created when Commission member Michael Guarracino resigned on May 17. Ms. Adams-Falconer’s term would begin immediately and expire Dec. 6, 2027.
There is still a vacancy for an alternate on the HLC. If you are interested in serving, you must submit to the Town, c/o Mr. Haskett, a board volunteer application, which you find here: https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/media/4936.
We will report on the highlights of the Town Council meeting.
Lynn Usher of 121 Ocean Blvd. took this photograph of the house fire at 150 Ocean Blvd. from the upper deck of his home just as the explosion described last night by witnesses apparently occurred.
(See The Beacon, 6/18/25, for background.)
According to Mr. Usher, who gave The Beacon permission to publish his photo, that was at 7:03 p.m. yesterday.
Mr. Usher and his wife observed a “substantial” increase, he said, in the flames shooting upward from the house and in the amount of black smoke filling the air.
His photo captures a view looking northward, with adjacent houses on Bluefin Lane in the foreground.
Kirsten Saylor of Frederick, Md., who spoke with The Beacon last night, said she heard the explosion about 7 p.m., when firefighters were already on the scene battling the fire. Mr. Usher’s photograph confirms her account.
We thank Mr. Usher for contacting The Beacon and allowing us to publish his photograph.
Fire consumes the house at 150 Ocean Blvd. in Southern Shores, while renters look on. (Photo courtesy of Len Schmitz)
An oceanfront vacation rental home in Southern Shores was destroyed this evening after bursting into flames, according to witnesses, who also reported hearing an explosion.
The rental home, located at 150 Ocean Blvd., was unoccupied at the time, the renters having departed before the fire broke out, The Beacon learned on the scene.
The Southern Shores Fire Dept. and the Kitty Hawk and Duck fire departments responded to the fire around 6:30 p.m. and quickly assessed that the three-story structure could not be saved, according to first responders who spoke with The Beacon.
Firefighters immediately took steps to prevent the spread of the fire by hosing down nearby homes and were able to contain it—although some flames shot out along what appeared to be the beach dunes to the south after crews had been battling the fire for more than an hour and a half.
“We’ll stay until it’s completely out,” David Sanders, a volunteer firefighter, told The Beacon.
Vacationer Kirsten Saylor of Frederick, Md., said she was returning by car from dinner out with family when she saw smoke and flames rising from the Southern Shores oceanfront and then heard a loud explosion when she got closer, possibly of a propane tank. The fire definitely preceded the explosion, said Ms. Saylor, who is an emergency medical technician in Frederick.
According to Dare County GIS, the house at 150 Ocean Blvd. was originally built in 1978 and is owned by Southern Shores Realty Co. Dare County recently assessed the value of the house, which has six bedrooms, four full bathrooms and two half-baths, an attached garage, 3,548 square feet of finished space, and a private pool at just $172,000.
The County assessed the land at $1.8 million.
Known as Sunz Up in the Southern Shores Realty rental catalog, the house appears in photographs online to have been beautifully remodeled and appointed. It has an occupancy limit of 12 people (See https://www.southernshores.com/outer-banks-rentals/0041-sunz-up.)
Earlier in the day, the Southern Shores Fire Dept. responded to a devastating fire in a Colington house, which the Colington Fire Dept. reported in The Outer Banks Voice was occupied at the time. The father and daughter who were inside the three-story structure were able to escape safely, but damage was extensive.
The cause of each fire is under investigation.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 6/18/25
Preparation is already under way for a 2027 beach re-nourishment project. Pictured above is construction on the Southern Shores shoreline during the 2022-23 project, the first-ever for the town.
The Southern Shores Town Council unanimously approved last Tuesday the Town Manager’s recommended FY 2025-26 budget; two service contracts with the Town’s coastal engineering consultant, one of which lays the groundwork for a 2027 beach nourishment project; and a zoning text amendment that restores guiding standards to decision-making on special use permit applications, which were removed by the Council just last year*—all in less than an hour, with little discussion, and with no comment by any members of the public.
The Town Council’s June 3 meeting was sparsely attended, and one Council member, Rob Neilson, was absent.
Also missing in action was Southern Shores Fire Chief Ed Limbacher, whose July report to the Council will likely cover both May and June.
Police Chief David Kole, however, gave an amusing account, illustrated with photographs, of how officers were able to track a scofflaw motorcyclist from Southern Shores down the beach as he eluded police, using Flock long-range LPR cameras.
The Flock technology read the bike’s license plate and showed the driver abandoning it on the roadside—evidence to dispute his claim later that he didn’t own it.
Flock is watching, folks!
Chief Kole also plugged a first-ever “Coffee With A Cop” event at Shore Coffee Roasters in the Southern Shores Crossing shopping center, on Friday, June 27, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Maybe the officer(s) can fill you in about Flock in Southern Shores over their morning coffee.
BUDGET HEARING REVIEW
Although no one spoke during the budget public hearing, Town Councilwoman Paula Sherlock, who was absent for the May 6 meeting when Town Manager Cliff Ogburn presented the FY 2025-26 budget to Council, inquired about how much taxes would increase for property owners with the 4-cent tax rate hike.
The Councilwoman said homeowners had been asking her about the bottom-line difference the increase would make to them, and she had conferred the previous day with Town Finance Officer Bonnie Swain about this issue.
At Ms. Sherlock’s request, Ms. Swain explained at the meeting that the tax on a $1 million property would increase by about $400.
During his May 6 presentation, Cliff Ogburn gave three examples of how much property taxes would increase with the tax-rate hike versus the revenue-neutral tax rate. He assessed the taxes on homes valued at $602,100, $1,097,700, and $1,620,100.
We published these figures on 5/27/25, and informed readers that the percentage increase in taxes with the 4-cent hike over the revenue-neutral tax rate would be about 27 percent.
This information was also in Mr. Ogburn’s budget report to the Town Council, which Ms. Sherlock should have received, but was not included with the budget that was accessible through the Town website. (It was available at https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/media/12096, but it’s already gone.)
We do not understand this omission. A budget without a narrative, an explanation, is just a mass of line-item figures. Every property owner should be able to go to the Town website and easily find on the home page a link to an explanation of the next fiscal year budget.
The Town did post a property tax formula to assist homeowners with calculating their new increase, and it is still online. You will find it at https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/media/12036. The formula shows a step-by-step calculation of the revenue-neutral tax (14.81 cents per $100 value) and the 4-cent-hike tax (18.81 cents per $100) on a property valued at $544,300. Beach nourishment taxes are additional.
MUCH DISCUSSION, BUT IS THE PUBLIC INFORMED?
Mayor Elizabeth Morey noted last Tuesday that the FY 2025-26 budget has been discussed multiple times during the current fiscal year, so there really was little left for the Council to say. She specifically mentioned the March 5 Council retreat as one such forum, but that meeting, although public, was not live-streamed, and minutes have yet to be posted for it.
Mr. Ogburn updates the Town Council during regular business meetings with “quarterly financials,” and he did so on Oct. 1, 2024, and Jan. 7, 2025. (The 2025-26 budget is the second year of a two-year budget prepared by the Town Manager with input from department heads.)
PDFs of these detailed financials are available on the Town website, but you have to know where to look to find them. You cannot search for “quarterly financial report” or something similar and be rewarded.
The PDFs—which you can locate by highlighting the “Government” heading on the home page, clicking on “Financial/Public Documents” under the “Documents” subheading, then clicking “Manager’s Quarterly Report” on the new page—are polished Powerpoint presentations with prominent visuals.
We find the summary of Fiscal Year 2024 on the first page of the First Quarter report, which Mr. Ogburn submitted in October, to be the most informative. In general, however, the Town Manager’s explanations of his reports at Council meetings are much easier to digest than the PDFs.
Quarterly reports are an excellent idea, but we believe the Town Council should do more. We believe it should hold ONE budget meeting strictly FOR the public, explaining revenues, expenses, investments, fund balances, infrastructure and equipment costs, and its decision-making about any tax-rate increase.
If property owners do not attend this meeting, or view the videotape, at least they’ve had an opportunity to educate themselves.
The Town Council particularly needs to explain why it did not dip into the $1,787,326 surplus in the Undesignated Fund Balance that Mr. Ogburn said exists, instead of raising taxes. What is the Town Council’s thinking about the UFB surplus? (See The Beacon, 5/27/25.)
One of the purposes of the UFB, which must maintain $3.5 million in reserve for emergencies, is to balance the budget when there is a revenue shortfall. Why wasn’t more of the surplus applied in the FY 2025-26 budget?
COMMUNICATION IS LACKING
We believe the Town could do a better job of informing residents and property owners about Town Hall events and issues and engaging the public in government affairs.
It has never done a bang-up job, but with its reliance on email (chiefly the newsletter, which provides meeting and hearing notices, but little else) and multi-click website links, the Town has not bridged the communication gap.
In her conclusory comments at last Tuesday’s meeting, Mayor Elizabeth Morey spoke discouragingly about the turnout for her May 14 Mayor’s Chat: Only two people showed up.
One homeowner wanted to understand better how the fire department will change when it becomes a municipal department, and the other had a question about street improvements. If the Town were to summarize such concerns in articles published in the newsletter, or posted on the home page of the website, it would be doing a public service.
Mayor Pro Tem Matt Neal also reported at the meeting that 30 citizens attended the open house May 27 to learn about the ideas and vision of the Entry Corridor Enhancement Committee, and the committee has received more than 500 responses to its survey, which has now closed.
How many of you knew about the Mayor’s Chat? If you did know, how did you learn about it?
How many of you saw the signs around town about the open house and knew what they were about?
The Town has appropriated money in the FY 2025-26 budget to hire a full-time Public Information Officer in January. We applaud this move. This professional needs to do much more than just respond to inquiries, or promote tourism. He or she needs to be proactive and issue updates and reports about what is going on in town—write a blog, perhaps. And these reports need to be easily accessible to anyone who looks for them.
The Town website is in dire need of a makeover. Too much content on the Southern Shores website is hidden. Homeowners go to Next Door to find out information that should be readily discernible on the home page of the Town website.
IOHO, the design of every other beach town’s website is superior to the design of the Southern Shores website. As just two examples, take a look at Duck’s and Nags Head’s websites:
You can scroll down the home pages of these sites and find just about anything you need.
A WORD ABOUT BEACH NOURISHMENT
Mum is currently the word among Town Council members about a 2027 beach re-nourishment project, which would be in cooperation with other beach towns. Nonetheless, they unanimously approved at their meeting spending $22,635 to perform “pre-permitting” tasks and a “native beach sediment analysis” to determine the nature of the sand needed.
“There’s a chance that we have what we need” on the beach now, the Mayor said, declining to make a commitment on “greenlighting” a 2027 project.
In April, Ms. Morey told The Beacon that she is not committed to doing beach nourishment to the extent it was done in 2022-23 every five years just as a matter of course. She said she would not “do” beach nourishment “just to be doing it.”
Inasmuch as the preparation process is already under way, Dare County makes funding available to towns on a five-year maintenance schedule, and sharing mobilization costs with other towns makes financial sense, would the Town Council really consider opting out of the 2027 project?
Time will tell.
According to Mr. Ogburn, engineering consultant Coastal Protection Engineering (CPE) will be presenting its formal proposal for the 2027 project’s design in “late fall.” The Town Council will have to decide then whether Southern Shores is on board and to what extent.
Mr. Ogburn also said that CPE’s monitoring report for 2025—which will be based on shoreline data it collects in Southern Shores this month—should be submitted in October. This will be CPE’s third-year post-nourishment report of “how sand is performing on the beach,” he said.
The Council should have this report—which the mathematically inclined Mr. Neal enjoys reading in detail—before it “greenlights” re-nourishment in Southern Shores.
A ‘FLAT YEAR’ FOR TOURISM EXPECTED
Councilman Mark Batenic, who represents Southern Shores on the Dare County Tourism Board, reported that, judging from figures through March, this year is stacking up to be “flat” in terms of tourism revenues.
Occupancy collections are down 2½ percent from the same time last year, but meal expense collections are up 1½ percent, he said.
According to Mr. Batenic, visitors are not renting by the week (Saturday-to-Saturday or Sunday-to-Sunday) as often as they have in the past. More are favoring Thursday-to-Monday/Tuesday stays and avoiding weekend travel.
In light of this trend, both he and Mayor Morey are encouraging Friday-to-Friday cottage rentals, an idea that has had currency in the past. In fact, the Mayor has been a strong proponent of Friday rental turnovers since she first ran for the Town Council in 2019.
Having driven on a summer Friday on Interstate 95 from Washington to Richmond more times than we care to remember, we would say that Friday driving is no piece of cake. You have to hit the road early to avoid ghastly congestion.
If Friday-to-Friday rentals were to increase substantially, we have to wonder what effect they would have on Friday and weekend traffic in Southern Shores.
*(Please note: In the interest of article length, we have omitted an explanation of ZTA 25-03, which restores guiding standards to decisions about special permit applications (Town Code sec. 36-300) that the Town Council removed when it approved ZTA 24-01 last year. This is being done in accordance with the UNC School of Government’s guidance about relevant N.C. appellate court opinions.)
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 6/10/25
As we have previously reported, the mandatory public hearing on the Town Manager’s recommended Town budget for fiscal year 2025-26, which begins July 1, will be held at the Town Council’s meeting tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center.
(See articles published on The Beacon, 5/27/25, regarding expenses and revenues in the budget and the proposed 4-cent tax-rate increase.)
The Council also will hear public comments on Zoning Text Amendment 25-03, a legislative bill prepared by the Town staff to amend Town Code sec. 36-300, pertaining to special use permit applications and their approval, so that the guiding standards for the Town Council’s decision-making on such applications are clearly set forth.
The Town Council has until June 30 to approve a budget for FY 2025-26.
In other agenda business, the Council will consider proposals from Coastal Protection Engineering (CPE), the beach nourishment engineering consultant that managed the 2022-23 project for Southern Shores, Duck, Kitty Hawk, and Kill Devil Hills, for 1) monitoring the Southern Shores beaches in 2025 and 2) “pre-planning” the four towns’ 2027 nourishment project.
CPE monitored the Town’s beaches during the past two years and proposes to do so again for approximately the same price ($35,639). We see no reason why the Town Council should not unanimously approve CPE’s service contract for this purpose.
CPE will collect data that measures volumetric and shoreline changes and enables an evaluation of the performance of the beach nourishment project, i.e., how well it is holding up.
The pre-planning for a second beach nourishment project that has not yet been approved by the Town Council involves the performance of “pre-permitting” tasks and a “native beach sediment analysis.”
CPE explains in a letter to the Town, which is included in the meeting packet, how it will perform these services and prices them collectively at $22,635. This proposal also requires a signed contract.
*****
Regrettably, we are unable to attend or to live-stream tomorrow’s Town Council meeting. We will report on the meeting as soon as we can.
In his report to the Town Council about his recommended fiscal year 2025-26 budget, Town Manager Cliff Ogburn gives three examples, based on different home values, of how much your annual property taxes will go up. They are as follows:
For a home valued at $602,100:
Annual tax at the revenue-neutral rate of $0.148= $891.11
Annual tax at the revenue-neutral rate plus 4-cent increase= $1.131.95
Percentage increase: 27.0 percent ($240.84)
For a home valued at $1,097,700:
Annual tax at the revenue-neutral rate of $0.148= $1,642.60
Annual tax at the revenue-neutral rate plus 4-cent increase= $2,063.68
Percentage increase: 25.6 percent ($421.08)
For a home valued at $1,620,100:
Annual tax at the revenue-neutral rate of $0.148= $2,397.75
Annual tax at the revenue-neutral rate plus 4-cent increase= $2,063.68
Percentage increase: 27.0 percent ($648.04)
Beach-nourishment taxes would be in addition to these taxes.
We did not include these figures in our earlier post on the budget because we thought we had hit number-overload. A comment from a reader pointing out the increase convinced us to add this sidebar report.
Thank you.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 5/27/25
It is easy to get lost in the numbers presented in Southern Shores Town Manager Cliff Ogburn’s recommended budget for fiscal year 2025-26, which begins July 1.
There are numbers for actual, amended, forecasted, and recommended budgets in his report. If you try to verify the percentages in the report’s charts comparing last year’s revenues and expenditures with those proposed for FY 2025-26, you can’t. They do not compute. We had to talk with Town Finance Officer Bonnie Swain to get things straight. (See below.)
This much is clear: The recommended budget, presented to the Town Council by Mr. Ogburn at the Council’s May 6 meeting, calls for 1) a 4-cent increase in the ad valorem tax rate, which will be imposed on the Town’s revenue-neutral rate of 14.8 cents, and 2) total General Fund expenditures of $11,706,772.
We downloaded the recommended FY 2025-26 budget with the Town Manager’s accompanying report, which was not available before the Council meeting, on May 7. We now find that when we search for the budget on the Town website, we cannot retrieve the accompanying report. See https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/media/12096. Without it, anyone analyzing the budget is at a disadvantage.
****
The Town Manager’s recommended budget is balanced by appropriating $227,395 from the Town’s “Undesignated Fund Balance” (“UFB”), aka Unassigned Fund Balance, $3.5 million of which is earmarked for disaster and emergency relief and the remainder of which can be used to balance the budget and pay for large capital expenses. UFB funds also can be transferred to the Capital Reserve Fund for future projects.
Last year’s budget was balanced with $2,918,771 from the UFB, $2.1 million of which was designated for construction of the new Trinitie/Juniper Trail Bridge, which just opened last week.
After deducting $227,395 from the available UFB as of June 30, 2025 to balance the FY 2025-26 budget, $1,787,326 in funds remain above the $3.5 million reserve, according to Mr. Ogburn.
You might ask why some of this “surplus” is not appropriated for the new fiscal year budget, or whether $3.5 million is too much to maintain in reserve for emergencies. The Town Council should be able to answer these questions, but we have not heard them addressed.
We reported on 5/13/25 the bottom-line balance of the FY 2025-26 budget, and on 4/10/25 we told you that a tax-rate increase of 4 or 5 cents was proposed at the only budget workshop held by the Town Council on April 10.
What more can we say about this proposed budget, which the four Town Council members present at the May 6 meeting—Councilwoman Paula Sherlock was absent—showed both a familiarity with, and participation in its creation?
Indeed, Councilmen Mark Batenic and Rob Neilsen lobbied for the budget and a tax-rate increase. Mr. Batenic said that the Council had been “in touch” with Town staff about the budget and “given [it] some very thorough thought.”
There was a time, not so long ago, when heads of the various Town departments (Police, Public Works, Planning, Administration, etc.) presented their itemized budgetary requests to the Town Council in public workshop sessions.
Such give-and-take has not existed during Mayor Elizabeth Morey’s administration. As a result, gone are the days when the public could analyze the line items in the budget and question, along with Council members, their amount and inclusion.
The exception in the upcoming fiscal year is the expense for the salaries and benefits of the agreed-upon number of Fire Department employees, budgetary appropriations that were discussed in the April 10 workshop. (There will be a full-time fire chief, deputy chief, assistant chief, four fire captains, and administrative assistant, and one part-time administrative assistant.)
Last fiscal year’s recommended budget included a very readable summary of itemized expenses by department. It included historical budget data (back to FY 2019) and useful graphics. Perhaps because the FY 2025-26 budget is the second year of a forecasted two-year budget, a similar summary was not appended to this year’s budget. We believe it should have been.
The FY 2025-26 budget is a well-prepared and packaged budget that members’ comments on May 6 indicate already has consensus on the Town Council.
We expect unanimous Council approval of it on June 3, after minimal (if any) comment in the State-required public hearing.
SECOND YEAR OF TWO-YEAR BUDGET
As mentioned, FY 2025-26 is the second year in a two-year budget that Mr. Ogburn asked department heads to prepare. Hence, if you read the recommended budget and come across figures for the “forecasted” FY 25-26 budget, you now know that those figures were forecasted by department heads a year in advance.
They are largely on the money.
FY 2025-26 is the Town’s first year of incorporating fire services into a municipal department, a “move,” Mr. Ogburn writes in his report, “predicated mainly on the need to provide employee benefits in order to hire full-time positions.”
The recommended budget proposes expenses of nearly $2 million for the Fire Department, which are, understandably, well above what was forecasted when the presumption was that the department would remain a non-profit corporation and largely volunteer-staffed.
Besides the Fire Department budget, the largest forecast discrepancies exist in the Administration and Public Works departments’ expenses. According to Ms. Swain, some of the increases in expenses in the Administration Department are related to the incorporation of the Fire Department (insurance, worker’s compensation, utilities).
Administration also is planning to add a full-time employee in January: A public information officer whose salary will be $63,860, she said.
The Public Works’ budget increase relates to the purchase of equipment, but Mr. Ogburn’s report does not explain how a line-item expense for PW equipment outlay went from $8,000 in the FY 2024-25 “amended” budget to $217,000 in the recommended budget. There is just mention of a “boom flail mower” in his report, but no elaboration.
The amended FY 2024-25 budget includes all additional expenses authorized during the fiscal year that were not included in the budget adopted last June.
We also can tell you, thanks to Ms. Swain, that in order to compare last fiscal year’s adopted budget with the recommended FY 2025-26 budget, she and Mr. Ogburn deducted the $2.1 million appropriated from the Undesignated Fund Balance in FY 2024-25 for the Trinitie/Juniper Trail Bridge replacement project. (Mr. Ogburn explained this at the May 6 meeting, too.)
They did this in order to compare “apples to apples,” Ms. Swain told us: adopted budget to proposed adopted budget. They considered the bridge expense to be extraordinary.
After subtracting the $2.1 million, Mr. Ogburn was able to calculate an increase in the Town’s proposed budget for FY 2025-26 of 9.45 percent or $1,011,063.
Curiously, nowhere in the Town Manager’s recommended budget report is the adopted budget total for FY 2024-25 of $12,795,709, actually set forth.
If that one-time capital expense of $2.1 million is included in the FY 2024-25 budget, then the proposed budget for FY 2025-26 is less than last year’s adopted budget by $1,088,937 or 8.5 percent: the difference between $12,795,709 and $11,706,772.
The itemized totals for the adopted FY 2024-25 budget do not appear in the recommended budget, just the totals from the amended FY 2024-25 budget. We do not understand this. Comparing an amended budget to a recommended adopt budget is apples to oranges.
We may be the only property owner in Southern Shores to have delved into the numbers in Mr. Ogburn’s recommended budget and, because of our propensity for math, we may have just confused you. We will attempt clarity. The proposed FY 2025-56 expenditures, by all departments, with their percentage change from the adopted FY 2024-25 budget are as follows:
Administration: $1,738,582 (an increase of 18.1 percent); the forecasted figure was nearly $300,000 less
Planning and Code Enforcement: $447,755 (a decrease of 3.07 percent); the forecasted figure was about $6500 less
Police: $2,586,153 (an increase of 3.14 percent); the forecast was for about $2500 more
Public Works: $961,361 (an increase of 28.70 percent); the forecast was for about $225,000 less
Sanitation Services: $1,048,000 (an increase of 5.21 percent)
Ocean Rescue Contracted Service: $237,245 (an increase of 3.49 percent)
Fire Services: $1,982,515 (an increase of 62.86 percent)
The recommended budget also includes $1 million in funding for a “more in-depth road project” on East Dogwood Trail—we have not heard the details explained—and road work coupled with stormwater infrastructure for the intersection of Hickory Trail and Wax Myrtle Trail.
The Town Council has committed $1 million annually over a 10-year period for street improvements. FY 2025-26 is the fifth year.
Replacement of portions of the existing sidewalk on the east side of Duck Road from Hillcrest Drive northward is budgeted at $335,950.
During their discussion April 10 about raising taxes, Town Council members asked what services the public would have the Town cut in order not to raise taxes and offered up the uninviting possibilities of recycling, chipping, and limb and branch pickup. They intimated that the budget is already bare-bone.
More apt questions for us are whether the Town Manager has tasked every department head with cutting back/tightening his or her budget and whether each one has done so.
Also, why is such a large surplus retained above the mandatory $3.5 million in the Undesignated Fund Balance? With such a large surplus, why is the Town raising property taxes?
COUNTY TAX REVENUES ARE DOWN
We conclude with a word about anticipated revenues in FY 2025-26.
With the tax-rate increase, Mr. Ogburn projects ad valorem tax revenue of $5,640,771 for the year, which is an increase of 28 percent over the tax revenue projected in the FY 2024-25 adopted budget and in the FY 2025-26 forecasted budget.
This revenue includes taxes paid for beach nourishment in the fifth and final year of the debt service payments for the 2022-23 project, which was budgeted at $11,325,189.
Mr. Ogburn recommends adopting the revenue-neutral tax rates for beach nourishment in FY 2025-26. They are 4.8 cents for municipal service district 1; 1.76 cents for MSD 2; and 2.51 cents for the town-wide rate. These rates “generate the required revenue for the remaining debt service,” Mr. Ogburn reports. He also notes that the Town will begin preparing for a potential five-year renourishment project in the upcoming year.
Mr. Ogburn projects an occupancy tax decrease of 7.86 percent; a decline in sales tax of 2.75 percent, and no change in the Town’s share of land transfer tax. When revenue from those three sources is combined, as it is in the budget line item, the percentage decrease between the adopted FY 24-25 budget and the FY 25-26 recommended budget is 4.8 percent.
All other revenue sources that the Town depends upon, such as monies for permits and fees and intergovernmental revenues (various taxes and grants), are not projected to decline.
OPEN HOUSE IS TONIGHT: The Town’s open house about the Entry Corridor Enhancement Committee’s goals and vision is today from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Pitts Center. Apropos of our budget breakdown, we wonder what budget size and revenue sources the committee has in mind.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 5/27/25
The Town will hold a Memorial Day ceremony Monday at 8:30 a.m. in the Southern Shores Cemetery to honor U.S. personnel who died during military service in war or in peacetime.
The cemetery is located at 66 S. Dogwood Trail next to the Duck Woods Country Club.
Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day was first recognized after the Civil War in response to the practice of communities and families decorating the graves of fallen soldiers, Union and Confederate, with flowers.
In 1868, the Grand Army of the Republic, a politically influential organization of Union veterans, issued the Memorial Day Act to establish a day on which the nation would honor those who died in wartime and decorate their graves with flowers.
The GAR chose May 30 for the ceremonial observance because the choicest variety of flowers would be available in the spring.
Since the post-Civil War period, Memorial Day has evolved nationally to honor and pay tribute to all military service members who died in any U.S. war, as well as during peacetime.
The name Memorial Day gradually became more common than Decoration Day after World War II, but it was not declared the official name by federal law until 1967.
In 1968, Congress changed the date of the holiday observance to the last Monday in May when it passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act to create several three-day holiday weekends, purportedly to benefit federal employees. The Act became law Jan. 1, 1971.
The Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved what was then known as Washington’s Birthday (February 22) permanently to a Monday in February and established Columbus Day as a permanent Monday federal holiday. (The Act did not create Presidents’ Day by combining Washington’s Birthday with Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12). Presidents’ Day—however it is punctuated—is not an official federal holiday.)
Congress also moved Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day and created to honor those who served during World War I, from November 11 to the fourth Monday in October.
The change in the Veterans Day observance met with disfavor because World War I ended on November 11 with an armistice signed between the Allies and Germany. Congress reestablished the November 11 holiday in 1978.
Veterans Day, a name that supplanted Armistice Day in the 1950s, at the urging of veterans organizations, honors all military veterans of U.S. armed forces.
The Southern Shores Beacon 