North High Shoals Town Council Votes to Accept the March 2025 Financial Statement and Notes Its Faults

The North High Shoals Town Council voted to accept the March 2025 financial statement on April 28, 2025, at 7 p.m. and discussed its implications for the town’s next budget plan, which council members will start crafting soon.  

The fiscal year for the town will end on June 30th, and several areas of revenue and expenditures in the 2024-2025 budget plan have appeared to either not meet or exceed expectations.

The town is almost $42,000 over budget in expenditures, according to the financial statement, though Kurtz said this figure is misleading because of the federal grants that go unmentioned in the budget. 

The financial statement for March 2025 showed $6,500 allotted to miscellaneous park and playground expenses for the fiscal year. The town has spent around $59,000 since the start of the fiscal year in those categories. 

Council member Hilda Kurtz said that those expenses were not in the budget, but the town paid the costs with money from federal COVID-19 relief funds, which were not included in the budget and were going to expire by the end of the year. 

“So, we were being fiscally responsible to be like, ‘let’s get playground equipment,’ ” she said. 

Town Clerk Sue Bishop said she is planning on working those numbers differently for the next budget plan to clarify those expenditures.

Resident Shannon Smith-SengStack appeared elated by the new park renovations. 

“The playground is incredible,” she said. “The whole town is really enjoying it.” 

The town’s budget expects to bring in $13,000 in building permits, but has only brought in roughly $5,300. 

Kurtz said that last year, the small town of about 500 residents brought in $13,000 in building permits, so they expected to match that this year and considered those building rates in the crafting of the budget. But people have not been building nearly as much because of rising mortgage rates and financial uncertainty, she said. 

“We’re actually pretty far behind where we thought we would be,” Kurtz said. 

The street maintenance category of the budget has unanticipated an extra $6,200 in repair costs already in this fiscal year. 

The town is preparing to insert six new speed bumps on highly trafficked roads. 

“We literally have minivans come through around 50-55 mph in a 25 mph zone,” Mayor Stephen Goad said. 

Bishop said that they ordered the pieces last week and are expecting installation in about a month and a half. The cost of the order was not represented in the March 2025 financial statement, but it could add to the deficit in the statements to come. 

The council then voted unanimously to give resident John Bentley certain restrictions as to how he could split his property and not impede traffic or park access. 

The town also needs $17,000 more in revenue by the end of the fiscal year to meet the budget expectations. The town will have excess revenue if the next two months follow the same trends as March, which brought in about $37,400. 

“We’re pretty fiscally prudent around here,” Kurtz said.