County Commissioners heard from Greg Motley, representing the newly-formed Budget Advisory Committee about whether or not the county should choose to go revenue neutral in the new budget.
The commissioners had to decide this question and notify County Clerk Susan Walker as well as set budget hearings by September 20 and submit their final budget to the clerk by October 1.
Motley said the committee plans to have all the data that they need to make final budget decisions significantly before the hearing date deadline.
He said that thus far, the Budget Advisory Committee has been working on big picture stuff. They were awaiting the commission’s revenue neutral decision to dive into the details.
Almost everyone on the BAC has an accounting degree or other significant accounting experience. He said they have reviewed 6 years-worth of data on the county’s finances.
“I think we need to commend the people in this building, everybody contributes to that because our audits are absolutely clean, and especially the county clerk. She has delivered clean audit after clean audit after clean audit,” he said. “The integrity of the numbers is good and the committee has appreciated that.”
While the committee prefers the county be revenue neutral, or at least keeping the mill levy as low as possible, the reason they cannot recommend going revenue neutral is that the county is playing catch up.
“We’ve run down the cash reserves of the county,” he said. The current financial condition of the county would make bond approval very challenging, and if approved, the interest rates would be very high.
“We need to start building our cash reserves back to where they were several years ago,” said Motley, and it will take multiple years to do that.
“We’ve also robbed peter to pay Paul,” he said, “In that previous commissions had set a plan to do replacement reserves,” by transferring funds, but in order to balance the budget, they did not made those transfers to those reserves for equipment replacement.
The landfill has a sinking fund requirement by statute. The landfill needs to be covering that, not the public works department. The courthouse needs $1 million in deferred maintenance. Cost increases that are out of the commission’s control, including insurance costs, keep sky-rocketing across the nation. These are examples of why the county can’t go revenue neutral. Motley did say the BAC will be fighting to keep the mil levy where it is.
“We have interviewed virtually every department head and every elected official in the building,” and talked to individual employees besides that, he said. “The committee has been very impressed with the quality of the employees in this building. We have good people, and we have people that serve the public.”
The draft 2026 budget that the committee received calls for a 6 mil increase. The committee is not willing to go that high. After comparing all the data, the maximum that they can recommend is 62.5 mils compared to the current 59.9. Motley recommended they adopt that as the maximum rate and then work to lower it between now and Sept. 20 or Oct. 1 with the goal of not raising the mil at all and perhaps lowering it if we can, “But we’re facing a lot of headwinds.”
“We are going to be doing everything we can to make sure that rate is lower, but there’s a lot of things out of our control here, too,” he said. The problem didn’t start here, but with historical decisions by previous commissions.
“We have to find ways to save money,” said Commissioner Mika Milburn.
Commissioner David Beerbower said that the budget will require a lot of work.
“A budget is simply a spending priority and when you decide to spend less, something’s got to go,” Motley said. So the commissioners should be attending the budget advisory committee’s meetings and setting their priorities.
Commissioner Samuel Tran suggested telling department heads give the commission their top 3 priorities.
Beerbower moved that the commission extend the mil rate to 62.5 and set the hearing date for August 11 at 5:35pm.
The motion passed unanimously.