GREENSBORO, N.C. — A new fiscal year means a new budget and the most recent approved budget is one of Greensboro's biggest yet.
The City of Greensboro unanimously approved the $620 million 2021-2022 budget during their Tuesday night council meeting.
WFMY News 2 took a closer look into where the money is going and figured out what this means for wallets of residents.
"This would be the biggest one ever probably, but it's a natural progression," City Budget and Evaluation Director Jon Decker said.
The budget It's up about $17 million from last years. What does this mean for your wallet? It won't be impacted much. Decker explained water and sewer fees are increasing 4.5%. That will be about a $2 to $5 difference on your bill each month.
"On average that ends up being about a $2.12 increase on average customers bill every month," Decker said.
Decker said the price hike is necessary for some maintenance.
"You may remember in the winter of last year, when it was so cold, we had mains breaking here and there, and you got to maintain that thing," Decker said.
Even though council raised spending, there's no tax rate increase.
"We are maintaining the tax rate we currently have of 66.25 cents per $100 of value," Decker said.
The approved budget also allows Greensboro Police to hire eight new officers and the city to recover from some COVID-19 -related setbacks.
"During the pandemic we had a lot of closures for businesses as well as our city operations like our parks and recreations programing, our library programing, a lot of that is starting to come back online," Decker said.
The budget also includes new positions in several areas including within the Greensboro Police Department. It added five new homicide detectives, a victim advocate, and a crime analyst in December and will add eight more officer positions in Fiscal Year 2021-22.
The budget also includes additional new positions in the Fire, Parks and Recreation, Water Resources and Human Rights Departments and the Minority and Women Business Enterprise program.
If you want to dig into the nitty gritty of the budget, it'll be available to everyone online in July.