City council met Monday, May 18 and passed the first reading of a $111,029,313 municipal budget that will add 30 new jobs, increase staff pay, hire 30 new, full-time \u00a0employees.<\/p>\n
The proposed budget for the 2027 fiscal year is about $100,000 less than the current budget. This decrease is due to the completion of several large projects that the city has been carrying for the last few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The proposed budget will include cost of living salary increase of 3.3% for qualifying\u00a0employees. To help fund this pay raise, the city will increase property tax millage, by the same percentage, from 98.1 mills to 101.3 mills.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This would mean that a property valued at $400,000 will pay $51 more for annual property taxes this year\u00a0\u2014 costing about $1,621.<\/p>\n
Taxes on a $300,000 property will be $1,215\u00a0\u2014 an increase of $38, while taxes on a $200,00 property will be $810\u00a0\u2014 an increase of about $25.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Water and sewer rates<\/p>\n
Under the proposed budget, if it passes a second reading, solid waste collection fees will increase from $32 to $33.<\/p>\n
Water and sewer rates are also on the rise. While water and sewer rates were initially projected to increase by only 3.3%, a significantly larger rate hike from Grand Strand Water and Sewer Authority forced city officials to adjust. Consequently, water rates will increase by 10%, while sewer rates will hold at the projected 3.3% increase to keep pace with rising service costs.<\/p>\n
Grand Strand Water is the only water provider that is available to the city.<\/p>\n
Monday’s meeting also served as the public hearing for the budget. No residents spoke in favor or against the budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City council’s next meeting is planned for Monday, June 1 at 4 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City council met Monday, May 18 and passed the first reading of a $111,029,313 municipal budget that will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[87340,87339,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-196642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-2027-budget","tag-city-of-conway","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}