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GREENSBORO — Some say it’s mortgaging the future to pay for the present. Others say it’s necessary.

But as the Guilford County Board of Commissioners struggles to create a budget that preserves services but avoids a tax increase, the upcoming sale of $7.3 million  in surplus land is looking like a solution to some.

County Manager Brenda Jones Fox  said the commissioners previously agreed to put any money from the sale of land back into the capital improvements  fund to help maintain and repair county buildings. She said they should stick to that plan.

“Any time you use one-time capital dollars or any one-time dollars to fund ongoing operations, that’s a sign of fiscal stress,” Fox said.

But with  cuts of $17.2  mil­lion needed to avoid a tax hike, some commissioners said everything should be on the table.

“I would like us to fund the Greensboro and Gibsonville libraries and the arts,” Commissioner Paul Gibson  said. “I’d also like to avoid a tax increase as much as anyone else. If we can use some of this money and do that, then I think we should.”

Gibson said he doesn’t deny that capital improvements are important. But a funding dispute over the Greensboro library has the city threatening to charge out-of-town Guilford residents as much as $175  per household for a library card. Gibsonville town officials say the county’s proposed cut would permanently close its library. Tough decisions have to be made, Gibson said.

“There are some capital projects we could postpone, I think,” Gibson said. “If we don’t, we’re going to do a lot more damage to the county than it’s worth.”

Commissioner Billy Yow  said he sees it as a matter of priorities.

“I would certainly hope that this board of county commissioners would be more responsible than that,” Yow said. “We have a lot of issues before us that have been postponed for many years. To turn a blind eye to this is not what these folks were elected to do.”

Postponing the cost of a new jail — a major capital improvement — cost the county tens of millions of dollars, he said. They’re spending the money because they have to, he said — and ultimately paying more than they would have before overcrowding made it an emergency.

Yow said if the county can’t afford to fund things like libraries and the arts, they shouldn’t be doing it. Taking money from capital improvements to cover current expenses might work, he said, but it’s a temporary solution that ignores the real problem.

“Any time you take one-time money and put it into a recurring debt, all you’re doing is putting a Band-Aid on the sore,” Yow said. “It continues to grow. It gets worse. Then what do you do?”

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com