The Town of Farmville should be sitting in high cotton. I’m not talking about the taxpayers in Farmville, but Farmville’s government.
In 2024 we property owners paid a combined total of $1,897,633 in property taxes. After the Pitt County revaluations and the Town of Farmville not changing our property tax rate, we paid $2,722,954. The Town of Farmville raked in an extra $825,321 in property taxes in 2025. If the rate is not changed, the Town of Farmville will receive about $3.3 million more combined from 2025-2028 just from this one line of income. If the property tax rate is not lowered, how will the Town of Farmville spend these extra millions? (You might remember that both Pitt County and the City of Greenville significantly reduced their property tax rates immediately following the 2024 revaluations.)
In 2025 the Town of Farmville received $3.75 million in Congressionally Directed Spending through the federal funding request of U.S. Senator Thom Tillis. This was for our new fire station. In 2026 Farmville will receive an additional $1 million of federal funds thanks to a request from U.S. Congressman Greg Murphy. This makes a total, so far, of $4.75 million of free money for our fire station from the U.S. government. That is huge help to our town for the much-needed new fire station!
Our first payment to pay off the $5 million library loan and the $1.176 million in interest was in July 2020 in the amount of $480,333. Each annual payment goes down by close to $10,000 per year. Our payment this past July was $431,133 and this July we will pay $421, 533. What we property taxpayers now pay as an increase in one year to the Town of Farmville will be almost enough to cover the Town’s library loan payment for two years. Again, that is huge.
Of course, we Farmville residents are also paying higher electric, water, and sewer bills practically every year, as rates continue to be raised by the Town. Certainly, a portion of this is due to increased costs the Town is passing on to us consumers. Still, a significant portion is not related to the Town’s costs. We pay above and beyond their increased costs.
This dashboard from the UNC School of Government shows Farmville’s high water and sewer rates compared to other municipalities across the state:
https://dashboards.efc.sog.unc.edu/nc
Obviously, an additional $825,000 per year in property taxes combined with $4.75 million in one-time grants from the federal government should put any well-managed municipality of 4,600 people in a terrific financial position. We as taxpayers should be told exactly how our money has been spent and how the Town of Farmville is using this extra $825,000 per year in property taxes.
celiastone 