Final Adopted Budget FY23-24

Estimated General Fund Salary Impacts 4% Base Wage Increases (February 2023)

$5,270,000 $3,100,000 $1,100,000

Police 10.6% Adjustments

Fire 4% Adjustments

4% Average Merits and General Employee Steps $1,650,000 Additional compensation impacts are driven by required increases to the City’s contribution to the retirement system totaling almost $3 million, support for overtime across the organization as a result of vacancies totaling approximately $600,000, and over $500,000 to support increased roster wages implemented in FY 2022-23. This increase in employee salaries and benefits will continue to make the City of Greensboro an employer of choice for our current staff and interested candidates for our vacant positions. Positions The FY 2022-23 budget included over 61 position additions to the organization in order to meet operational needs and community expectations. Some of these positions were added mid-year. As Honorable Mayor Nancy Vaughan stated during her inaugural State of the City address in March 2023, “There is an enormous shift taking place…the $546 million of commercial construction activity recorded in 2022 is the highest volume in Greensboro’s history!” We recognize the importance of increasing and strengthening our staffing capacity to more effectively respond to the needs of growth. Thus, the FY 2023-24 budget includes 44.5 positions added to the organization in order to meet these needs especially in our development services area. Fifteen of the positions requested as part of this budget are devoted to strengthening our staffing capacity to address the increase in development activities in our city. With the added positions in Fire, Planning, Engineering and Inspections, Transportation, and Water Resources, we are able to expedite our development reviews and better address some of the delays in our permitting process. In order to help support increased compensation for Police officers, 30 currently unfilled patrol positions will be decreased. Additionally, Police is reorganizing to more effectively support demands for service while addressing the challenges of vacancies within the department. A total of 10 sworn positions will be converted to professional positions to assist with this effort. The net organizational change includes 14.5 additional positions. Maintenance, Operations, and Transfers Several items make up increases necessary for continued maintenance, operations, and transfers. Primarily, the FY 2023-24 budget includes continued support for our economic development partners. The budgeted amount for Economic Development incentives is increasing by $1.9 million from $1.5 million in FY 22-23 to $3.4 million in FY 23-24. About 90% of this increase is related to the $1.7 million for the Publix incentive agreement that is budgeted to start in FY 23-24. This creates at least one thousand jobs for the Greensboro area. City Council adopted updated economic development guidelines in March 2021 that provides tiered investments to strategic industries, to jobs paying livable wages, and in areas of the City that need investment the most. As the nation has faced inflationary increases for goods and services, these also impact services and programs provided by the City of Greensboro. Over $5 million is included in the recommended budget to address cost increases for items like diesel fuel, service contract increases, and program supplies. Over $1 million of these increases impact the General Fund. Another significant area impacted by inflationary cost increases are technology maintenance and software increases. T his cost is primarily related to software contract agreement increases for organizational IT purposes. This includes internal service charges for the Network Services Fund. IT fees are set to increase about $700,000 overall, primarily due to more than 10% increases for Microsoft agreements, security improvements, and the rollout of Office 365. This cost will allow more remote and cloud-based access to platforms like the Office suite and shared network folders for employees. The move of city resources from on-site servers to the cloud will also eventually limit direct staff need for on-site server support. Some of these IT increases will be captured in transfers to other funds because a significant amount of internal IT fees are paid by Public Safety IT operations housed in the GM911 fund.

Adopted 2023-24 Budget

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