The BOC unanimously approved a budget of $14.2 million for 2009, down $850,000, or 5.6 percent, from this year’s $15 million budget.
The 2009 budget will not require a tax rate increase from the BOC. However, this does not necessarily mean that individual property owners won’t see an increase on their tax bills, which they’ll receive sometime after the first of the year. Property owners who’ve seen their home and land values go up over the past year could see higher bills.
Likewise, the county school board must raise $570,000 in new property taxes this year to cover annual payments on old construction. The school system used sales tax money to handle that payment in recent years, but those funds have been depleted. This, too, could lead to an increase on tax bills.
Nevertheless, BOC members were quite pleased at the end of Wednesday’s budget meeting. The county government will not require more money from local property owners to function in 2009. In fact, the BOC plans to reduce revenues from property taxes by $146,000, from $7.58 million this year to $7.44 million next year.
Commissioners said that avoiding a tax increase took a lot of effort, not just from the board, but from the BOC staff members, who worked on the budget, and county department heads, who proposed numerous cost-saving measures.
Commissioner Stanley Thomas praised county employees, who will not receive any raises in 2009.
“The employees have been patient,” said Thomas. “They haven’t been screaming, ‘where’s my raise.’ They understand what’s going on.”
Commissioners ultimately agreed to pull $230,000 from the county’s reserve funds to help cover a projected revenue shortfall. This will leave the county with approximately $1.4 million in reserves. Board members noted that the state expects each county to maintain a reserve fund the equivalent of 15 percent of its annual budget. This serves as a sort of insurance against financial disaster. And the county will still be able to meet that expectation in 2009. They will also have $325,000 in contingencies for 2009. Contingencies are funds set aside in a budget to handle unexpected expenses.
The board opened its budget discussions several months ago with a projected $14.95 million budget for 2009, but the group met week after week, reviewing each line item in the 32-page budget. During the budget sessions, they whittled away over $750,000 from that initial budget figure, asking department heads to make due with less on item after item.
Like much of the county, the board was divided on whether to scrap animal control in 2009. Three commissioners — Mike Youngblood, Wesley Jordan and Bruce Scogin — voted to keep the service next year, while commissioners John Pethel and Stanley Thomas favored reducing the animal control staff from three to one and leaving code enforcement officer Jack Huff to handle dangerous dog calls.
The board did vote to eliminate two jobs in the county government in 2009, positions at the transfer station and building inspections office.
But the BOC agreed at its final budget meeting not to lay off any more employees. They also said that departments cannot endure an across-the-board cut of four percent, which had been considered. They said that such a cut would lead to more layoffs.
Meanwhile, Madison County’s 2009 budget does not include any new big ticket items — or capital outlay expenditures. The 2008 budget included the purchase of seven patrol cars and three ambulances.
While the state government deals with a huge revenue shortfall, local government leaders say the state’s financial troubles are being passed down to county governments, school systems and municipalities.
“They (the state) are cutting a lot of grants,” said Thomas. “They’re holding two grants we got last year. They’re holding our roads.”
Commissioner Wesley Jordan agreed that the state is leaving county and municipal governments to fend for themselves in many ways.
“The bottom line is the state passes all this down and the government is absorbing everything as opposed to passing it on to everybody in the county,” said Jordan. “That’s the bottom line of all of this.”
