Mecklenburg County is drafting a policy for what happens when a resident pays in cash and does not have exact change: round the total up to the nearest nickel.
County staff presented the plan to the Board of County Commissioners on June 23 as an information item. No vote was taken, and the county says it is not short on coins today. The work is preparation for a day when it might be. The U.S. Mint struck its last circulating penny on November 12, 2025. The pennies already in wallets and cash drawers stay legal tender, but no new ones are being made. "The penny problem is only a problem once it becomes a problem," Zach Lewis, a senior assistant to the county manager, told the board. The point, he said, is to have an answer ready before the shortage arrives.
Here is the answer staff is drafting. When a resident pays in cash, the county would first ask for exact change. If the resident does not have it, the cashier would ask for another form of payment, a card or a check. Only if neither is available would the total round up to the nearest five cents. The maximum effect of that rounding, Lewis said, is four cents or less per transaction, no matter how large the bill.
The rounding would be the last step, not the first. Only nine county departments take cash at all, and the large majority of those transactions run through just two: Parks and Recreation and the public library system.
Why up, and never down
Commissioner Susan Rodriguez-McDowell, who represents District 6, asked why the county would round up rather than to the nearest nickel in either direction, the way a store would. The answer is property taxes. Under North Carolina General Statute 105, property taxes must be payable in cash, and a tax bill cannot be discounted or forgiven except in the case of an illegal levy or a clerical error. A penny shortage is neither. A cash tax payment that lands a few cents under the total therefore cannot be rounded down, because that would leave the debt legally unpaid. A bill of $1,000.71 paid in cash would round to $1,000.75; a bill of $1,076 would round to $1,080. Staff is proposing to apply that same round-up rule everywhere else, so the county does not handle a library fee one way and a tax bill another.
Who keeps the difference
The rounded-up cents stay with the county. Commissioner Vilma Leake, of District 2, kept pressing on where the money lands. "Who then holds that money? Who claims it?" she asked. The answer, from the county manager's office: the county keeps it as revenue, reported alongside its other collections. A resident who owes $25.18 and pays in cash would pay $25.20, and the extra two cents stays with the county. Individually the amounts are small, four cents at most against the fiscal year 2027 budget the board adopted this month. The principle is what drew the questions. There is no policy yet for what happens to the money as it accumulates. At-large Commissioner Yvette Townsend-Ingram, noting that the two cash-heavy departments are Parks and Recreation and the libraries, asked that any surplus be steered back into those departments as services for residents. The manager's office said it would weigh that as the policy is written.
Staff also floated a longer-term fix: setting future county fees so they end in whole dollars or five-cent increments, which would head off the rounding question for most charges before it ever came up.
The county has not squared the approach with the City of Charlotte, which takes its own cash payments. County Manager Mike Bryant said he had not yet had formal conversations with the city, but that both governments are working from the same guidance, issued by the UNC School of Government and the North Carolina Government Finance Officers Association, and that he would talk with the city manager at the appropriate time.
The policy is still being written, with a pilot at one county location planned before any countywide rollout. The penny, for now, still works.