Orange County 2026 Priority Legislative Issues

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13 TALKING POINTS/LOCAL IMPACT • Orange County currently has 79 children in foster care. • Youth aging out face limited housing and support options. PUBLIC EDUCATION (NCACC Legislative Advocacy Goal Category) Orange County's schools face significant operational, capital, and workforce pressures that local funding alone cannot meet. • GOAL — Seek funding that promotes workforce development, continuing education, and college/career readiness. (Strategic Plan Priorities 5 & 6, Objectives 3 & 6) • GOAL — Support legislation to modernize public school funding formulas. • GOAL — Support legislation to improve teacher and classified staff recruitment and retention, including increased state salary schedules. (NCACC Public Education Top Priority Legislative Goal) • GOAL — Seek funding for community college—high school partnerships that expand experiential learning. TALKING POINTS • School district operating funding is a state function; however, the lack of adequate funding has put a significant burden on county budgets and resident tax bills when they attempt to fund the budget gap. • Orange County has been committed to covering that gap as much as possible. Despite this: • Orange County is not even in NC's Top 10 for its property tax rate. Notably, Orange County also held its property tax rate to only 1.19 cents over the revenue neutral rate in the last revaluation. • Even so, 34.84 cents of Orange County's 63.83 cent tax rate is directly attributed to k-12 operating spending. • For residents in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School District that has its own special district tax, 49.63 cents of the 78.62 cent tax burden is due to k-12 operating budgets. • On resident tax bills, the proportion dedicated to schools operating spending is 55% in Orange County and 63% in the city school district, respectively. • It is important to note that Municipalities set their own tax rates, and many municipalities across our region, including our own, have implemented significant increases over revenue-neutral tax rates to address their residents' needs. • In state-level legislative committee meetings, there has been significant mention of the burden of property tax on residents, especially the elderly and those with low income. The best mechanism that the state has for alleviating property tax burdens is to supplant local funding on K-12 operating education.