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Residents and advocates press city on 2025 budget, policing and participatory budgeting at public hearing
Summary
At a public hearing on the 2025 comprehensive budget, residents urged spending restraint, questioned whether population growth justifies rising costs, and pressed the council on implementation of a 50‑point public safety plan; the session featured sharp exchanges over homelessness, nonprofits and race.
Mayor Dennis Stafford opened a public hearing on the city’s 2025 comprehensive budget and invited residents to speak.
At the microphone, Dave Buchin of the Upstate Conservative Coalition told the council the city’s population growth is “essentially flat” from 2020 to 2024 and said that fact should temper explanations for rising costs. “The population growth is not the reason for increases in spending,” Buchin said, urging the council to either fund unfinished commitments from the 50‑item public safety plan or acknowledge that the city will not implement them.
Buchin pressed the council to set priorities instead of funding a long list of quality‑of‑life projects, listing examples such as a bike park, native‑flower plantings, and a library solar charging station. “If you’re gonna do the things, do them. Fund them right today,” he said.
Other members of the public urged fiscal caution and suggested revenue and cost strategies. Sam Brewer, who identified himself as a local resident, urged the council to favor projects that require low ongoing maintenance and to pursue matching grants and sales‑tax strategies that rely on nonresident visitors. “Doing projects that help everybody in the city and require very little maintenance is actually a great way to spend money,” Brewer said.
Supporters of public safety funding also spoke. Multiple speakers, including commenters who had worked in public safety, defended additional training and capital needs for the police department and argued that some investments — such as a new station and equipment upgrades — respond to infrastructure and safety needs rather than population growth.
Mayor Stafford and other council members responded that the city does experience growth in ways not reflected by population counts — for example, an increase in second homes and short‑term rentals — and that those shifts affect service demands. The mayor noted recent openings and the addition of a third fire station as evidence of changing needs.
The council did not take an immediate vote on budget adoption at this meeting; the public hearing provided testimony that city officials said they would consider as they finalize the budget.
The public hearing included a separate public comment period in which residents raised related topics — paid downtown parking, the Loughberry Dam upgrade, the role of nonprofits in homelessness services, and the need to fill a vacant public works commissioner post — all items the council said staff will continue to review.
