For the second consecutive year, Mecklenburg County residents named affordable housing as their top priority for county spending. For the second consecutive year, fewer of them said they would be willing to fund it with a tax increase.

Those are the headline findings from a budget survey that Adrian Cox, director of the county's Office of Management and Budget, presented to the Board of County Commissioners on April 7. The survey was conducted between June and July as part of a combined community and budget survey — a change from previous years, when the budget survey ran separately in February. It collected 1,118 responses at a 95 percent confidence level with a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. Respondents matched the county's racial and ethnic composition closely, with at least 171 responses per commissioner district.

The Rankings

When asked to name their top priorities for county funding, residents chose affordable housing first, followed by mental health, behavioral health, and substance use services; access to healthy food; services for senior adults; and workforce development. Affordable housing and mental health held the top two positions from the previous year's survey.

The affordable housing number is striking on its own: 22.8 percent of respondents ranked it as their single highest priority. Another 12.6 percent placed it second, 13.2 percent third, and 7.9 percent fourth — meaning more than half of all respondents put affordable housing in their top four.

The survey also measured unmet needs — not what residents think the county should fund, but what their own households lack. The top unmet needs were affordable housing, workforce development, access to healthy food, healthcare access, and new parks, greenways, and open space.

The Tax Question

Cox then presented the number that sits at the center of every budget season: 48.8 percent of respondents said they would be willing to accept a slight tax increase to fund improvements to the services they selected as their top priority. That is down from 51 percent in the previous survey. The year-over-year comparison comes with a caveat — the survey instrument and timing changed — but Cox presented the figures side by side without qualification.

Another 32.8 percent said no. The remaining 18.3 percent did not respond to the question.

The income breakdown sharpened the finding. "When you evaluate this question by income," Cox told the board, "we find that residents with lower incomes were much less likely to indicate yes to this question."

The data presents a tension that the board will carry into budget season: the services residents most want funded — affordable housing, healthcare access, food assistance — are the services most used by the residents least able to absorb a tax increase.

What the Survey Did Not Ask

Commissioner Laura Meier asked why education was not among the priorities on the survey. Cox explained that the county had redesigned the survey several years ago to focus on areas where commissioners would face specific budget decisions. "Just about every time we did it, education rose to the top," Cox said. The county chose to remove it from the list — not because it stopped mattering, but because the county's main lever is how much to appropriate to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. County Manager Mike Bryant added: "Recognizing education still is an interest of the community."

What the Commissioners Said

Commissioner Vilma Leake made the case for senior services, which ranked fourth. "The greatest number happens to be seniors in Mecklenburg County who fits all of these that we talk about — housing, food, transportation," she said. She connected the data to earlier in the evening, when a county employee named Carson Cohn had told the board that more than 45 people a day were showing up to a closed community resource center. "The young man this evening pleading for us to make sure we do the right thing for the right people at the right time," Leake said.

Commissioner Elaine Powell said the survey matched what she hears at the district level. "I have 170-some respondents in my district, but it totally matched the pulse of what I hear all the time," she said.

Commissioner Susan Rodriguez-McDowell was less enthusiastic about the survey instrument itself. "I found when I tried to fill out the survey that it was kind of confusing," she said. "Not met, partly met, mostly met, fully met. Like that whole thing, I thought that was weird." She praised the budget infographic produced by the county's public information team as "excellent" and "really clear."

The Simulator

The county had previously offered an online budget simulator that let residents adjust spending levels and try to balance the books. It was promoted at events, on social media, and through the county's public information office.

"We found that a lot of people would go to that and they would look at it, but they weren't actually trying to balance it or they couldn't get it to balance," Cox said. "They would go in and maybe say, well, I want to increase this one thing a whole lot. And then they would just leave."

The county replaced the simulator with budget dashboards. The survey results, broken down by district and demographics, are available at budget.mecknc.gov.

The same meeting featured a charged exchange over state property tax legislation that ended with Chair Jerrell directing staff to explore litigation. The county manager's recommended FY2027 budget is expected in May.