County commissioners gave every indication Monday night that one way or another they will produce a 2006-07 budget that will not require a tax increase in an election year.

The current tax rate of $2.07 is predicted to fall some $348,000 short of providing the revenue necessary to fund the county's operations, including additional mandates imposed due to required contributions to state retirement funds, solid waste (old county landfill) monitoring, automatic salary increases for county officials and rising medical expenses incurred by prisoners housed at the county Justice Center, as well as an increasing number of students attending county schools.

“Your options include getting more revenue by raising the tax rate, raising the wheel tax, raising the sales tax (which has failed on two votes in the past year), and raising impact fees on new construction,” explained county Mayor Glen Donoho.

“Or you could take a portion of the ‘debt service' fund and transfer it to the general fund to avoid a tax increase,” continued Donoho, who retires from office after the August election.

A transfer of funds out of debt service into the general fund would require a two-thirds vote of the the twenty-member legislative body. 

A special called Budget Committee meeting, followed by a special meeting of the County Commission body of the whole Monday night, approved a long list of budget amendments presented to the commissioners by county departments and offices at their regular meeting last week.

Over two hours of discussion were required to pass the 43 budget amendments presented to the budget committee. A block of about a dozen of these amendments were approved early in the meeting on a motion by Anna Dean Carter. The budget committee commissioners agreed they could agree on these amendments without further scrutiny or debate. However, the remaining twenty-odd items were examined one by one, and several department heads were questioned at length about their end-of-year money-moving requests.

The end result was approval of all the fund transfers;...

however three motions were subsequently made and passed by the body as a whole relating to present and future end-of-year budget amendment requests: On a motion by Gammons, seconded by Snow, all future requests must list or specify what “other equipment” or “other supplies” were being funded or unfunded in the budget amendment requests.

A second motion, by Dennis, seconded by Ray, directed that all “growth money” should go into the county's General Fund rather than being proportionally available to the county schools and other offices and departments to include in their next year's budget. The “growth money”, estimated to be between $210,000 and $250,000 for the coming fiscal year, comes from the increased revenue that a penny on the tax rate brings in due to new construction property being added to the tax rolls.

A third motion, by Carter, seconded by Dennis, requires all future budget amendments be brought to the commission on the first day of the month following the month for which the budget amendment applies; and for both purchase orders and budget amendments to be brought before the commissioners on the first day of June for the end-of-year budget amendment requests.

Several department heads noted that this request would be nigh on impossible to comply with because a month is not “closed” until the last day of the month, and some time is required to determine if budget amendment requests are necessary. However, Mayor Donoho stated that other counties have successfully imposed this rule, and all three motions passed the commission on voice votes.

DEPARTMENT HEADS AND COUNTY OFFICIALS have been instructed by the commissioners to bring them budget proposals for the coming year at the same level of funding as the current fiscal year. Another budget committee meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Monday, July 3, prior to the regular July county commission meeting set for that same night at 7 p.m.

Regarding the possibility of transferring funds from debt service into the general fund to avoid a tax increase, County Mayor Glen Donoho noted that the county had only raised taxes 11-cents in the past four years, at the same time reducing the county's debt from some $17-million to $10-million.

While some commissioners believe that any excess funds in debt service should be used to further pay down the county's indebtedness, saving the taxpayers on future interest payments, others believe using the fund's healthy surplus to avoid a tax increase can fix a projected general revenue shortfall in the short term. A debate on this issue will accompany the commissioners' budget discussions in the coming weeks.

In relation to the Solid Waste department's budget, commissioners decided to move $50,000 in expenditures required by the state from that budget request into a debt service proposal made at the last meeting to fund a required sewage grinder for the Justice Center's sewer system and for new monitoring wells also mandated for the county's old landfill at the transfer station near Red Boiling Springs.