97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey spoke with Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver on Tuesday, May 24th. She discussed the town budget, and the Last Friday Art Walk. Below is a full transcript. To listen to the full interview, click here.
Andrew Stuckey:
Let’s talk about last night’s town budget meeting. Was there anything noteworthy from public comments?
Jenn Weaver:
Yeah, so last night was our town board workshop on the budget and also the public hearing for the budget. We had a couple of public comments on the budget last night. We had one resident come to talk about the water and sewer rates, and then we had another group of folks come from the Fairview community to talk to us about a request that they had made for some funding to do repairs on the Dorothy Johnson community center.
Stuckey:
Right. Anything else from the budget meeting that stood out to you?
Weaver:
By the time we get to this point in the budget process we have talked about the budget several times before, so there are no big surprises to be revealed. We’re looking at the manager’s message, the budget message that goes at the front of the document, and then going through to be sure there are no final questions. In addition to that, we’ve got parameters placed around the commitments to affordable housing funding that we would like to make. Because of Hillsborough’s size, we don’t have a housing department per se, but we do make contributions, like the other jurisdictions do, to the Partnership to End Homelessness and to the Community Home Trust and our match for the home funds.
But we’ve been having discussions about doing more than that because of the acute nature of the affordable housing crisis. We made a decision last night to add some funding to our regular line items that we think will likely go towards an ask the Partnership to End Homelessness has made regarding their gaps analysis which we’ve been talking about for a couple of years. We’ve been interested in knowing what the other jurisdictions are doing and that’ll be clearer and more finalized for us later in the summer. One of our issues right now is that our audit is late, so a lot of our budget right now is based on estimations. They’re reasonable estimations, but we will have more clear figures to be sure we have all the facts and figures correct later in the summer so we can clarify that funding.
Then we also want to have a long-term plan in response to the housing coalition’s ask about allocating two cents worth of funding to affordable housing. And that’s something we are interested in ramping up over time. We aren’t really in a position to do that right now. That two-cent figure for Hillsborough would be about $300,000. We’re not in a position to do that just in one fiscal year right away. We are interested in ramping that up over time, but we need a clear plan to get there, so that’s a stay tuned for later in the summer.
Stuckey:
Is there any estimate on when the budget will be passed?
Weaver:
Yes. We expect to approve the budget at our June 13th meeting.
Stuckey:
Excellent. Well when I was preparing for this interview, I was kind of shocked to see that we’re already to the last Friday of May. This month has flown like it tends to do, but it is the last Friday, so the art walk is coming up this weekend.
Weaver:
That’s right! Last Friday is back in full swing and it’s certainly a very popular time to be in Hillsborough. There are so many good things happening, people out in the streets enjoying art, enjoying music. And we also have the return of the opportunity for people to table on the old courthouse area–that started back last month. It’s really a wonderful time to be in Hillsborough, to visit one of our local restaurants and see all the creativity alive and active here in town.
Stuckey:
Excellent. Well, we’re almost out of time, we’ve got a couple of minutes left. Is there anything else that you’d like to highlight going on in Hillsborough or anything you thought we’d talk about that we haven’t?
Weaver:
Well one thing that I thought about right before you called was in anticipation of it being Memorial Day weekend. This time last year was almost June when Hillsborough had up our pride flags for the first time, and long story short, we no longer are able to have flags of any kind on Duke Energy’s equipment. We are in the midst of working out the banner agreement with them. A banner will just be a different type of display that doesn’t create the same safety issues for their workers. I just want to be sure the public knows that they’re not going to see the American flags up this Memorial Day, and that’s still going to surprise some people. We do have American flag banners and pride flag banners in the works and the staff have been working hard, we just don’t quite have them in our hands yet. We’re in good stead, think banners, not flags. The banners are coming, but we won’t have those up in time for Memorial Day.
Stuckey:
All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate the conversation and I hope you have a great day.
Weaver:
It was great talking with you, Andrew, until next time.
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