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would be allocated to three land use categories in the same proportions that expenditures were allocated in 2006-2007. Also of note is the fact that education and human services departments accounted for roughly one-third of the total budget (or one half of the budget if one includes likely future uses of the current budget surplus). The services provided by these expenditures are directed exclusively to the residential sector; hence the large "footprint" of these two departments in county budget has a dominant impact on the results of this study. Table 2 summarizes revenues and expenditures by land use category. Expenditures exceeded revenues for the residential land use category, while revenues exceeded expenditures for the commercial and agricultural land use categories. The computed revenue/expenditure ratios quantify the extent to which each of the three land use categories is either a net contributor or a net drain on Gaston County's financial resources. For comparative purposes, the bottom of the table provides the results from some 103 other Cost of Community Services studies that have been conducted throughout the U.S., as well as six studies that were conducted in Henderson, Chatham, Wake, Alamance, and Orange Counties over the course of the past decade. The revenue/expenditure ratio for the residential land use category is 0.81; this implies that for each dollar in property tax and other revenues generated by residential land uses, the county spends $1.23 to provide services supporting those land uses. In other words, the residential sector is on balance a net user of local public finances. On the other hand, the other two land use categories are net contributors to local fiscal resources. The revenue/expenditure ratio of 1.13 for agriculture implies that revenues exceed expenditures for this land use category by 13 percent. The commercial land use category stands out as having the highest revenue/expenditure ratio (2.41). This result indicates that the county spends only 41¢ on services benefiting commercial and industrial establishments for every public dollar generated by those establishments. Finally, Table 3 presents an analysis which computes the residential property value needed to generate an exact balance between average revenues contributed by current housing units and the average value of public services consumed by households. This "breakeven"house price was computed assuming that any new household would consume the average amount of services reflected in the 2006-2007 budget—i.e., that they would possess the average number of school kids, consume an average amount of public health and social services, etc. The 5 G-4 Page 248