The Hillsborough Board of Commissioners approved a $22.6 million operating expenses budget for the 2018-2019 fiscal year at Monday’s meeting.

The budget, which becomes effective July 1, includes $10.8 million in the General Fund, $11.2 million in the water and sewer fund and $640,000 in the Stormwater Management Enterprise Fund.

Although this year’s budget brings no change to the tax rate and the stormwater fee, the water rate will increase by 9.25 percent and the sewer rate by 7.5 percent in order to zero out the deficit.

Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens said the town must raise rates in order to zero out the deficit for the reservoir expansion and unforeseen projects.

“We thought we would probably have to in order to expand the reservoir. We also have a couple of pretty significant infrastructure projects that have kind of immediately arisen that were not really on the horizon,” said Stevens. “There a section of water-sewer on Orange Grove road; there’s a part that goes under Interstate 40 that really needs replacing, and the last thing we want is to have that one collapse on us so we need to take care of that. We think it’s much more financially sound to take care of these things.”

The sewer main replacement at Orange Grove Road is expected to cost $440,000 and the West Fork Eno Reservoir expansion is expected to cost $16 million dollars over 24 years.

Stevens said the town board and water and sewer board spent a lot of time discussing concerns about affordability for people on fixed incomes.

“We do want to come up with some way so that we can help deal with affordability but for right now we’ve been focusing on being fiscally sound,” said Stevens.

The projected loss of $372,000 annually from Efland-Cheeks sewer customers disconnecting from the system this October is yet another reason for the increased rates.

Water rates in Hillsborough were last raised in July 2012 and sewer rates were last raised in July 2015.

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