Wilmington may break promise not to use taxes for bonds

You might have heard Wilmington City Council may raise taxes to make up for a $7 million budget shortfall. The mayor says the city needs the money to pay for the bonds that voters passed several years ago. That caught our attention, because when they were pitching the bonds back in 2006, city officials specifically said they would not result in a tax increase.

If you live in the Wilmington, you probably got a newsletter back in 2006. The city put it together using your tax dollars to tell us the facts about some controversial bond referendum that would soon go before the voters.

While detailing the $14 million transportation bond, the newsletter says “If the bond passes, the city tax rate is not expected to increase.” It also says the $36 million parks bond “can be done with no city tax increase.” City officials reiterated that in interviews with WWAY NewsChannel 3.

“There will not be a tax increase to support these bonds,” Public Services Director Richard Kling told WWAY in February 2006. Mayor Bill Saffo now admits that was pretty misleading.

“It’s always been understood that when we float a bond, whether it’s parks, transportation, water and sewer bonds, education, that there’s always a possibility that you might have to raise revenue to pay for that,” Saffo said recently.

And that’s exactly what council is now considering. Faced with a significant drop in tax revenue, the city is considering a property tax hike, withholding pay raises to city employees or using money from the general fund to plug the gap. It’s also looking for other expenses to cut, even in the budgets of the police and fire departments. They’ve been largely spared from cuts since the recession hit, but drain 80 percent of the city’s revenue.

“I know I’ve had a lot of people call me and say, ‘Please don’t raise my taxes,'” Saffo said. “We’re going to look at every single way and every single option we have on the table, and all options are open.”

As for the information in the newsletter that many voters relied on when deciding whether or not to vote for the bonds, Saffo said that needs to be reviewed.

“I need to go back to the people that wrote this,” Saffo said. “Obviously the public information officer that put this thing together obviously, what I’ve heard so far is they felt very confident in the economic climate that we were in that they didn’t feel that we would have to have any kind of tax increase.”

The city spends about $16,000 each time it puts out a newsletter, which are mailed to all households in the city limits.