The Chapel Hill Town Council and Carrboro Board of Aldermen have traded barbs with the county commissioners about landfill costs, library services, even dental care.

Last month the commissioners raised the landfill fee $5 per ton. The towns said the increase was too high and imposed too late in a tough budget season. They proposed a $2 compromise the county rejected.

The fee will rise by $5 in the coming fiscal yar and by $2 each year after that, raising $1.8 million if the landfill stays open until 2016. The money will help run sewer lines and make other improvements in the Rogers Road area next to the landfill.

Last week Mayor Mark Chilton said it may not be legal to use the money for some of what the county wants to do.

Then after County Manager Franklin Clifton said rural parts of Carrboro and Chapel Hill may also be losing out on municipal services, Carrboro Alderman Dan Coleman shot back with some harsh words.

"It is bad form and perhaps a tad disrespectful to Carrboro staff to use the passive voice in asserting that 'there are concerns over whether annexed areas are being provided municipal services at the same level of service as other areas of the towns,'" Coleman wrote in an e-mail to local officials.

"What is he talking about? And who is concerned?" Coleman wrote. "We just built a new fire station in north Carrboro, the major capital investment since I've been on the board."

Landfill fees

Chapel Hill's higher tipping fee will cost the town about $62,000 next fiscal year; Carrboro's, about $20,100.

Both towns say the increase leaves them scrambling to fill a new budget hole, but Commissioners Chairwoman Bernadette Pelissier says the towns were warned.

"The town managers had been broached on this by our county manager because it was something of a possibility some months ago," she said.

The relationship between municipal government and county government is inherently at odds, she said.

"You can never expect consensus," she said. "The fact that we have disagreements does not mean that we have bad relationships."

Pelissier said she talks regularly with the mayors. The group had breakfast just last week, she said.

"There are issues that we as a community haven't dealt with in the past, and now they're at the forefront because they should have been resolved before," she said.

Tensions are also high because of the economy, Clifton said. "We're making difficult decisions every time we sit down," he said.

While the tipping fee increase may have surprised the towns, in the context of their entire budgets, it's "not a big deal," he added.

"Until a decision is made to do something, nothing gets done," he continued. "If you talk with all the political leaders, often we meet and often we discuss, but a lot of times we don't decide."

Some town leaders, however, say the county has not acknowledged what they have done for the landfill neighbors.

"I don't necessarily expect the county manager to be familiar with all of our actions in north Carrboro but I would hope that he would ask before presuming," Coleman wrote in an email.

"The fact that we are building a Rogers Road sidewalk and have brought bus service to the area should be recognized."

Chapel Hill Town Council Member Penny Rich said the towns and county are butting heads.

"What I've observed in the past two years I've been on the council is that we're not communicating well .... the 'us' and 'them' mentality has to go away."

Library funding

The governing boards have also come to an impasse over funding for the Chapel Hill Library and the closing of the county dental clinic in Carrboro.

The county contributes $250,000 per year to the Chapel Hill Library, about 11 percent of its operating budget. The town says the county should pay more since 40 percent of users live in Orange County, but not in Chapel Hill.

"We are funding two library systems," Rich said. "We've never said, 'We don't want to fund the county system,' so we're happy to help ... [but] we can't keep assigning citizens of Chapel Hill to bear this cost. It's just not right ... it's just not fair."

This month the town will decide whether to continue to accept funding from the county or to charge non-Chapel Hill residents to use the library. The cost of the library cards hasn't been decided, but the council would set aside money to help low-income residents use the library.

Dental services

Last fall, the commissioners decided to close the county dental clinic in Carrboro and consolidate services in Hillsborough. Chapel Hill and Carrboro protested.

"This was a closure of a dental clinic without a true plan," Rich said in October. "I think it's a bad idea."

The commissioners agreed to offer bus passes so patients could get to the Hillsborough clinic, but Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said at the time the move didn't make sense.

"We're seeing a consolidation of county services in Hillsborough, and it seems to be a trend [that] I'm worried about," he said. "I'm concerned that the location of those services is being moved from the center of the population to Hillsborough. ... More than half of the county lives in the town of Chapel Hill."

The clinic is scheduled to close this month, and will save the county $65,000 plus $5,495 in equipment costs.

Economic development

Despite some conflict, Chapel Hill and the county have broken new ground on bringing more businesses to the area, Kleinschmidt said.

"I think there probably is some tension, but it's not uncommon for that to happen in general," he said. "It would be limiting to merely characterize it as hostile or uncooperative, because in many ways the towns and the county have been working really hard together on some issues."

Kleinschmidt said the town's and county's economic development directors speak frequently and work on company recruitment together. The county plans to announce a major business expansion this week.

"We really are doing great things together, even if we're having challenging time[s]," he said.