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Chapel Hill Community,
Last week, Town Council held our final budget work session on the 2025-26 budget which comes up for a vote at our June 18th meeting. Today, I am following up to provide everyone with a final update.
Figuring out this year’s budget and tax rate has been complicated as council and staff have worked to address rising costs, federal funding cuts, and overall economic uncertainty. After evaluating many options and weighing trade-offs, a voting majority of five members on council have asked the Interim Town Manager to bring forward the following for our consideration:
- A 2025-26 budget totaling $163,672,372 which represents a 4% increase over this year.
- A tax rate of 50.0 cents/$100 valuation which is 5.8 cents over the published revenue neutral rate of 44.2 cents.
Throughout this process, it has been important to us to make sure that people throughout our community have the information you need about both the revaluation process and the challenges we face, as a community, at this time. As a reminder, the 2025 county-wide revaluation has rebalanced the tax base, shifting more of the overall tax burden to residential property owners. As a result, at the revenue neutral tax rate, many people would see an increase in your tax bill.
For those wanting to better understand the impacts of the revaluation combined with the new rate on the town portion of your taxes:
- The average impact on a $500,000 home will be $570 annually ($280 due to the reval; $290 due to town increase).
- You can calculate the actual town portion of your tax bill by following the instructions here, using 0.50 for the proposed rate applied to your 2025 valuation.
We know that this comes at a difficult time for many in our community and continue to welcome any questions you may have at this time. Please send those to mayorandcouncil@townofchapelhill.org.
Also, as a reminder, if you have questions about your revaluation, you should reach out to the Orange County Tax Assessor’s office (919-245-2100; reval@orangecountync.gov).
In the coming weeks, I’ll be back with everyone about some of the many projects and initiatives we have been working on this spring.
Sincerely,
Mayor Jess
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