Apex Friendship Middle School's Matin Maani, a 7th grade social studies teacher, has been named Wake County's 2026 Teacher of the Year.
I especially appreciated his comments about helping students engage with difficult topics thoughtfully, with both heart and intellect. That's the kind of teaching students remember.
Congratulations to Mr. Maani and Apex Friendship Middle.
These budget updates will stop soon, I promise. Maybe one more after this.
This is an unusual week for Town Council, with two work sessions: our regular monthly work session on Tuesday and a special budget work session on Thursday. The budget conversation is the big item this week, and Thursday is when Council is expected to choose a direction on the tax rate before final consideration on June 9.
A quick Apex budget update: the numbers are still moving.
The original draft budget included a larger property tax increase. After our most recent work session, and after a few of my suggestions were integrated, including increased fund balance use and targeted departmental trims, staff has moved the working draft down to about a 3-cent increase.
At the next budget workshop on May 21, the Town Manager is expected to bring Council more options, including scenarios around 2 cents, 1.75 cents, and 0 cents. The final baseline rate has not been decided yet.
Council will review what is included or removed under each option. We may also vote individual adjustments in or out. Because of that, the public hearing has been moved to June 9, pending the May 21 discussion.
A 0-cent option likely means no meaningful service expansions, including no new APD officers and no increase in vehicle replacements. It may still be an option Council reviews, but residents should understand the tradeoff.
I proposed asking staff to analyze a 1.75-cent option because residents deserve to see a serious alternative before Council settles on a final number. My goal was to reduce the tax impact while preserving key priorities.
That means looking at vacancy timing, delays or reorganizations of unfilled positions, limited fund balance use, operating reductions, software costs, revenue assumptions, and fee schedules.
Lowering the rate reduces the immediate impact on residents. At the same time, every reduction has to come from somewhere: staffing, equipment, maintenance, infrastructure planning, programs, or other town needs.
Residents should not have to decode a budget spreadsheet to understand the choices being made. What should Apex fund now, what can wait, and what tax impact is responsible?
I’m planning a Budget Town Hall on May 26 at 6pm to review the decisions made at the May 21 work session and get one more round of input before the June 9 budget hearing. More details coming soon.
Apex Peakway Southwest Connector is in construction and remains on track.
Recent work includes 20-inch waterline construction along S. Salem Street, bridge approach slabs, curb, gutter, and sidewalks along Peakway/Grappenhall/Towhee, testing for traffic signal pole foundations, and brick pavers.
Next up: completing the waterline work along S. Salem Street, continuing bridge approach slabs, installing barrier rail on the bridge, and traffic signal pole foundations.
This is a big one, and the aerial view helps show the scale of the work underway.
Another capital projects update: Apex's wayfinding signage project is moving from design review toward construction.
Council approved the PGA Construction contract on April 28. The Notice of Award was sent April 29, and the tentative Phase 1 schedule has fabrication and installation running from June through December 2026.
The practical goal is simple: make it easier for residents and visitors to find parking, public destinations, downtown businesses, bike routes, and pedestrian connections.
A quick capital projects update: Apex's Solar PV Array project is moving through construction and remains on schedule.
Building inspections have passed, the Town has requested Permission to Operate from the utility, and staff training is being scheduled. The current phase is estimated to wrap up in July 2026.
This is a facilities and energy-management project intended to help manage long-term utility costs and operations. Not flashy, but useful infrastructure.
Apex is growing, and that means the Town has to keep making real choices about roads, parks, public safety, utilities, downtown, greenways, and how we pay for it all.
So I’m curious:
What’s one Town investment you think would make the biggest difference in your day-to-day life?
Could be a sidewalk gap. A safer intersection. More shade at a park. Faster permitting. Better traffic signal timing. A greenway connection. Something else entirely.
Yesterday, Council continued working through the proposed FY26-27 Apex budget.
The original Manager’s recommended budget had about a 3.5-cent property tax increase. After Council feedback, the Manager came back with a revised 3.0-cent baseline.
Council then broke into small groups to test whether we could responsibly reduce the proposed increase further. I was on the Blue Team. Each team had three Council members, and recommendations were made by majority vote.
Most of the alternative budget ideas I brought forward also received support from colleagues, including design work for the Core Banks Road light. I think we are on track toward a 1.75-cent budget. That is encouraging, but no final decisions have been made.
One of the harder questions is what to do with the Community Investment Fund. That fund pays for Apex’s long-term capital needs: transportation projects, parks, public facilities, sidewalks, greenways, and other infrastructure. If we underfund those needs, they do not go away. They usually come back later as delays, higher costs, or projects that fall further behind.
There is real disagreement on Council about whether to reduce that funding, and if so by how much. My position is that we should avoid reducing it if we can find savings elsewhere.
The budget is not final. Staff will bring back options for Council to review at the May 21 work session, including the revised 3.0-cent proposal, a 2.0-cent increase, a 1.75-cent increase, and a 0-cent scenario.
Council is scheduled to consider the budget for adoption at the June 9 meeting.
Before we vote, residents should see what each option means for services, staffing, public safety, vehicle replacement, fund balance, and capital projects.
My goal is to lower the proposed tax increase if we responsibly can, without weakening Apex’s long-term infrastructure funding unless we have exhausted better options.
Property taxes matter. Infrastructure matters too. We have to be honest about both.
The town paused late fees and disconnections during the billing recovery process. That pause helped residents while the town worked through billing issues, but it cannot continue forever.
As of the presentation, Apex had 30,597 active customer accounts, with 4,405 accounts more than 30 days past due. The total amount more than 30 days past due was over $6 million. To put that in perspective, the total cash balance of the utility is currently around $12 million.
Many customers - residential and commercial - have simply stopped paying utility bills.
That matters because utility services are paid for through utility funds. If a large amount of money cannot be collected, the cost eventually has to be made up somewhere. That could mean higher rates for other customers.
The goal is not to cut people off. The goal is to get accounts back on track.
Options include payment plans, budget billing, medical consideration, Apex CARES, Neighbor Up, and other assistance programs. If you have a past-due balance, please reach out now.
Across North Carolina, property taxes are becoming a larger part of the affordability debate. Many homeowners are opening revaluation notices and tax bills and seeing numbers that feel disconnected from their household budgets, especially where property values have climbed quickly.
Residents are also trying to understand why bills rose even when local tax rates went down. It is easy to assume local governments must simply be collecting too much. But in fast-growing communities, the harder problem is not just how much a local government collects. It is how revaluation shifts the burden among different kinds of property owners.
The root issue is the uniformity clause in the North Carolina Constitution. Because of it, local governments cannot set one tax rate for residential property and another for commercial property. The result may sound fair in theory, but can produce unfair outcomes during a revaluation.
Much of the current debate has focused instead on property tax levy caps. A levy cap limits how much total property tax revenue a town, city, or county can collect. That may sound like direct relief, but it does nothing to address revaluation-related tax shifts.
We saw this clearly in Apex. Residential values rose dramatically during the 2024 revaluation, while commercial growth lagged behind. Successful appeals by deep-pocketed corporations pushed some commercial values down even further. The result was a noticeable shift in the tax burden from commercial properties to residential homeowners. Even though local tax rates dropped, many bills still rose because residential values increased faster than the overall tax base.
I’ve built several tools to help Wake County residents better understand their property taxes. One showed that, for the most Apex homeowners, revaluation was the largest driver of the bill increase. Another showed that most towns dramatically reduced their tax rates after revaluation. The lesson was clear: a bill can rise because the tax rate increased, because the total levy increased, or because a property’s value rose faster than the rest of the tax base. Those are different problems, and they require different solutions.
A levy cap does nothing to fix that. It may limit the total amount collected, but it does not prevent the burden from shifting within the tax base. If residential values rise faster than commercial values, homeowners can still end up paying a larger share.
Levy caps can also harm basic services. Municipal costs are rising quickly for insurance, construction, infrastructure, public safety, utilities, and employee retention. State and federal funding is also becoming less reliable. Capping one of the few major revenue sources towns actually control, just as more responsibilities are being pushed onto them, could leave communities with fewer options and weaker services.
Even setting that aside, levy caps still miss the central problem. They focus on how much a local government collects. They do not address who pays what share.
When residential values rise much faster than commercial values, a uniform tax rate locks in that shift, and residential bills rise while commercial bills fall. A town or county can lower the overall rate, but it cannot rebalance the burden between residential and commercial taxpayers.
That is the constitutional problem North Carolina should be debating.
What we actually need is a better constitutional amendment. North Carolina’s uniformity clause is unusually restrictive. Many states require uniformity within a property class, such as residential or commercial, while allowing different classes to be treated differently. North Carolina should move toward that model.
During revaluation, residential and commercial rates should be allowed to adjust separately so the overall levy on each class does not suddenly shift just because one class appreciated faster than another. Put more simply: if residential property values rise faster than commercial property values, local governments should have a way to prevent that from automatically shifting more of the tax burden onto homeowners.
That does not mean giving local governments unlimited power to raise taxes. The state could limit this authority to revaluation years, require revenue neutrality within each class, and require public reporting on how the burden is being distributed. The goal should not be to create a blank check. The goal should be to prevent sudden and unfair shifts between residential and commercial taxpayers.
Combined with more frequent revaluations, that would do far more to reduce tax shocks than a levy cap. More frequent revaluations can smooth out market changes by keeping assessed values closer to reality over time. Long gaps allow changes to build up, making the eventual correction feel much more dramatic. A revaluation pause may sound like relief, but it risks making the next shock even worse.
The proposed constitutional amendment misses the mark. As currently described, it would authorize the General Assembly to impose limits on local property tax increases, incorrectly presuming that local revenue growth is the core problem. But the General Assembly could already set such limits by simply passing a law. The amendment would not lower anyone’s tax bill, set a specific cap, or address the tax burden shifts residents are actually feeling.
If lawmakers want to help people stay in their homes, North Carolina has better options. The state could expand circuit breaker programs, strengthen homestead protections, create better deferral options, require more frequent revaluations (not less), and most importantly consider an amendment that alters the uniformity clause. What North Carolina needs is a Property Tax Stability Amendment: a constitutional change that would prevent sudden shifts in the tax burden between residential and commercial property during revaluation.
North Carolina does not need a symbolic property tax amendment. It needs one that solves the problem residents are actually facing.
This is a major public safety achievement for Apex.
The rating reflects more than fire response. It also considers water infrastructure, 911 communications, inspections, training, equipment, and prevention work.
It shows that Apex has made strong investments in public safety and that those investments are paying off.
Quick read out from last night's Council meeting. As usual I'll do a full write up later in the week.
Holly Springs recently passed an ordinance providing definitions of and putting some restrictions on where e-bikes can be used. Should Apex consider this as well?
This is actually something we’ve looked at before. Ultimately, we didn’t move forward with an ordinance - a lack of clarity in state law and concerns about enforceability among other things. The options are actually quite large, from a light touch (requiring helmets, clarifying who has the right of way, etc) to some pretty dramatic restrictions (what if you had to be 16 and have a license? Or what if you couldn’t use them on a road if you were underage? Or what if they are not allowed on greenways?)
What do you think?
I’m excited to share a new tool for our community: Health Watch, a public website that makes it easier to see health inspection information for Apex establishments in one place.
Residents can search by location, browse the map, and view recent inspection results, grades, and reports for restaurants and other inspected facilities. Public information should be easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to use, and this is one more step toward that goal.
Take a look here: https://inspections.peaknewsnetwork.org