Skip to main content

Budget

The Hendersonville City Council adopted their FY2025-2026 Budget on June 5, 2025.

View the FY2025-2026 Budget

The budget document and its preparation and adoption express the basic values of the City. Budgets reflect the negotiations and compromises undergone during the continuous process of budget adoption. They define government's economic and political role in a community, guiding, sanctioning, and limiting administrative action. Budgets not only represent plans for the future, they also mold that future by the policies they contain. A good budget establishes a vision for its respective community and communicates, with utmost transparency, the vision for the future.

On June 6, 2024, City Council adopted the recommended budget as presented.

VIEW THE FY2024-2025 ADOPTED BUDGET

Budget Report Dashboard

The City's budget report dashboard provides a summary of the City's budget and actual expenditures by fund and department to the date of the latest posting of data from the Finance and Budget Office. This tool is available to help departments, staff, and public gauge how far along the City is in expending public funds approved in the budget.

Interactive Project Chart

The City's interactive Gantt Chart provides a timeline snapshot of City projects as well as NCDOT projects that contain City infrastructure.

The Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act (LGBFCA) defines the annual budget as "a proposed plan for raising and spending money for specified programs, functions, activities, or objectives during a fiscal year" [G.S. 159-7(b)(1)]. Each City budget describes the sections contained within the budget document, explains the budget process, explains how to read charts and graphs and interpret numbers, as well as how to understand the effects of inflation.

There are three general stages of budget preparation and enactment including departmental formulation of expenditure requests and revenue estimates, preparation of a recommended budget document by the budget officer, and review and enactment of the annual budget ordinance by the respective governing body. The LGBFCA requires mandatory dates at which certain processes must be completed [G.S. 159-10-13]. Departmental requests must be submitted to the budget officer before April 30. A recommended budget must be given to the governing body no later than July 1, and the governing body must enact the budget ordinance at the start of the fiscal year, July 1.

The annual budget ordinance may be amended any time after its official adoption; however, the amendments cannot increase or decrease the tax levy or alter a taxpayer's liability unless the City is ordered to do so by the courts or an authorized State agency.

The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) presents an award for Distinguished Budget Presentation to the City of Hendersonville for its annual budget. In order to receive this award, a governmental unit must publish a budget document that meets specific program criteria as a policy document, an operations guide, a financial plan, and a communications device. 

A Capital Improvement Plan (Program), or CIP, is a short-range plan, usually four to ten years, which identifies capital projects and equipment purchases, provides a planning schedule and identifies options for financing the plan. The CIP can be found within the City's budget document.