INDIAN TRAIL PLANNING RETREAT

March 30th and 31st saw interesting coversation and exchange of ideas during the Indian Trail Planning retreat. Topics involved everything from the stormwater fee to the curfew ordinance and everything in between. The bottom line coming out of the session was not whether the town council was going to raise your taxes....but by how much????? The days are gone that this so called sleepy little town can exist on an .08 or .10 cents tax rate. The perfect example of how growth DOES NOT PAY FOR ITSELF can be seen in Indian Trail. Current population is around 24,000 and with approximately 4,600 more homes in the pipeline we can expect another 12,000 people bringing our total to somewhere around 36,000. Major issues are being dealt with in the coming months and an election looms on the horizon for 4 members of the council.

Major Issues:

1. Town Center: Including the new town hall and all that goes with it. $8.2 million.
2. Liquor by the drink: Currently the ordinances are being rewritten so as to protect the town..but this issue will not go away and may influence the next election. Has the potential to bring in quality *non fast food* restaurants....but at the same time will not provide the silver bullet to the town for excess revenue. If done the right way it can help, but there will be added cost to the town to provide extra deputies or added police prescence. I don't believe it will be the boon to the economy some expect. (Unk cost to the town)
3. Police protection: We currently have 8 officers contracted by the town from the sheriffs office. At approximately $64,000 per officer $512,000 budgeted. At some point, the town will reach a point where they have to consider starting their own police department. A year ago or so, there were stats out from police agencies stating the optimum ratio of police to citizens was 500 to 1. Stallings I believe runs in the neighborhood of 750 to 1 or 1000 to 1. Indian Trail at that rate would be a minimum of 24 officers needed now with 12 more to follow. 24 officers would be approximately 1.5 million dollars needed in the budget. 2.3 million for 36 officers.
The town has to enter into a contract with not only the sheriff but the County commissioners due to the fact the county picks up about 10% of the cost for contracted officers...so Iam told.
With the budget crunch at the county level...I can only imagine that the price to contract officers are going to go up.
4. Roads: All are overcrowded. That point can't be argued. Planning for roads in this area are non existant. Due to lack of funding at the state level, towns are now expected to front the money for the road projects with a promise of payback in the future. Towns in order to receive funding for projects have to provide 20% or lose the project. Towns typically operate on a shoe string budget and have a limited amount of money. Roads that are adequate now...need to be put on DOT list for expansion now...in 30 years they will be overcrowded. Dot could help situations if they would just upgrade intersections as populations increase.. For instance, Potter and Chestnut. Increasingly busy, DOT could have put in necessary turn lanes to avoid backups. Then the future businesses that are going to be built could be charged for the upgrades. Instead, all will be done afterwards or during the project itself. Meanwhile, you could sit at that light for 3 or 4 cycles due to someone making a left. Same can be said for Potter and Pleasant plains, or McKee and Pleasant Plains...just to name a couple.


Bottom line, the town could easily go into their budget retreat with an increase from .10 cents to .25 and still not have enough tax money to do what they need to do. Will that happen? Probably not right away but its coming. The lack of past planning and balancing the budget with cash reserves have caught up to this town that never wanted to prepare for the future. Election year politics and all will affect the tax process also....it is conceiveable that the tax rate could go to .15 cents and no one will blink an eye. We as citizens need to expect this increase...not a lot we can do about it. Judging from the turn out during the planning retreat...citizens either are too busy or don't care about the process, and that is not good. The decisions in the next few weeks will cost each person in Indian Trail money. Some will be money people don't have to spend in the first place.