It took two meetings, four votes, and several angry shouts from county employees in the audience, but by a 4-1 margin, the Macon County Board of Commissioners passed a $63,754,537 budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
The budget lowers the property tax rate from 40 cents to 27 cents per $100 valuation.
The compromise budget that got a majority vote was proposed by Commissioner Josh Young and supported by Commissioner Gary Shields. Commissioners Danny Antoine and Paul Higdon took a split second before raising their hands in favor of the motion, sending the 100-plus member crowd into raucous applause as Commissioner John Shearl cast his “nay” vote.
“I feel it’s like an airplane, you know, airplanes don’t take dramatic leaps up or down, you kind of trend in a direction,” Young said of his budget proposal. “If we’re trying to trend in a certain direction, we steer that way.”
The $63.75 million compromise budget was $812,441 lower than the proposed budget. This budget took out an animal control officer ($56,444), car and animal box ($61,859) that would have transitioned them from an administration job to an on-the-road job, took out funding for the Highlands Soccer Field ($873,658) and reduced contingency funds by $285,657.
Added items were a full body scanner for the Macon County Detention Center ($200,000), funding to improve Zachary Park in Highlands ($100,000), and funding to move the Highlands School/Pre-K project forward to “shovel ready.” ($165,367). The remaining difference comes from investment earnings.
The budget vote ended the nearly 90-minute meeting, which had to be moved upstairs to the fourth-floor courtroom due to audience size. Much of the crowd were county employees who wanted to see their 4.5% raises included in the budget, which they were, but not without controversy.
Before the final 4-1 vote on Monday, there were two 3-2 votes against proposed budgets. The first was the most contentious, proposed by Shearl. His budget included taking out funding for the Molar Roller, the Highlands soccer field, the animal control position and equipment, and reduced the contingency fund; then added the Zachary Park upgrades, the Highlands School/Pre-K project and a full body scanner for the detention center. Shearl’s motion also remove proposed solid waste fee increases for the Highlands Transfer Station and finally, angering the audience, would make the 4.5% county employee raises (3% cost of living adjustment and 1.5% step-up adjustment to reward long-term employees) just a one-time raise and remove it as a recurring expense.
Shearl’s defense for his budget proposal was that “we can’t predict the future” and that the budget was “give and take,” which he said multiple times to angry audience members, specifically on why he proposed to make the employee raises a non-recurring expense. On the Molar Roller, Shearl said the interior is still good and it can work without moving. The Molar Roller typically goes to all Franklin-area schools (and Highlands if it can) to offer dental services to youth. According to Public Health Director Kathy McGaha, it has been a money-maker for the county.
On opposing the increase of solid waste fees for Highlands, Shearl said money from Highlands is continually going down the mountain. Macon County Solid Waste Director Chris Stahl said one of the fee increase requests – the transfer fee for commercial waste from the Highlands Transfer Station from $8.75 to $12.50 per ton – was correcting a board action from last year. The fees for 20-ton loads (the maximum legal amount) would increase from $175 to $250, to cover costs.
Finance Director Lori Carpenter said using Shearl’s proposal would reduce the budget to $62,883,494 with a property tax rate of 26.12 cents per $100 valuation.
After roughly 50 minutes of discussion on Shearl’s proposed budget, Shearl and Higdon voted in favor with Antoine, Young and Shields voting against, which drew cheers from the crowd.
Immediately after, Shields called for a vote on the budget “as presented.” That vote failed with Young and Shields for, Antoine, Higdon and Shearl against, drawing groans from the crowd.
Much of the discussion centered around the Molar Roller, with Shearl suggesting that quotes on the current unit be obtained before selling it to help pay for a new one. Antoine suggested paying for it out of the county’s $42.4 million fund balance. McGaha said that since the unit is 20 years old, getting new parts for it is virtually impossible and feels like no one would buy it. Eventually, Young included the Molar Roller in his successful budget motion.
Shields said going lower than 27 cents for the millage rate could hurt the county in its Needs-Based Public School Fund Grant application, which could net up to $60 million for the proposed Franklin High School project.
At the start of Monday’s meeting, Antoine read a prepared statement saying he was contacted by many people after the previous week’s budget vote who were “gripped by fear,” and thought the failed budget vote was final. Antoine said he wanted to take time to make a sound decision and expressed his desire to drop the millage rate to 25 cents and to cover the Macon County Recreation Pool so it could be used year-round. The pool was not brought up again for the remainder of the evening.
After the successful budget vote, Higdon thanked Shearl for looking out for the taxpayers of the county.
“We need to get this thing done so [Finance Director Lori Carpenter] can do her job and I’m not voting against it,” Higdon said. “We’re getting the money and it doesn’t matter where it comes from I guess, but I would like to see that millage rate drop [further].”
June 13 meeting ends in recess
Six days previous, during its regular monthly meeting, the commissioners voted by a 3-2 margin against the proposed 2023-24 budget.
The vote for the roughly $64 million budget had Young and Shields in favor, while Higdon, Shearl and Antoine were against.
The budget motion, made by Young, took out the $873,658 for the Highlands soccer field because the ongoing geologic survey will not be complete until April 2024, moved $373,658 into contingency and subtracted the other $500,000 from the budget altogether.
The proposed budget included a 4.5% pay raise for county employees, of which 3.5% was a cost of living adjustment and 1% was a retention pay bump.
Higdon said he would be OK with a 2% or 3% pay bump, but not 4.5%.
County Manager Derek Roland defended the budget, saying Jackson County is doing the same 4.5% pay raise and cited local studies on how the public sector needs to up its pay to compete with the private sector.
“COVID really wrecked everywhere, it tore the private sector apart. As I understand it, not one county employee lost any income during COVID, right?” Higdon asked Roland. “Even if you were in quarantine, that’s sick leave...what I’m saying is, yes, I agree, we got to have high-quality employees, but when you say ‘Hey, COVID’s created all these issues,’ it created issues in the private sector too…I mean there are sad cases out there. County employees didn’t lose anything. Government employees didn’t lose anything during COVID. Maybe some family members. I mean, throw in here, we’re having an adult discussion.”
Mike Decker, the retiring clerk to the board and human resources director, said the county employees were all doing their jobs during COVID and asked Higdon to not lose sight of that.
After the vote, Shearl criticized what he said was the inflation of government.
“We’re growing salaries and growing the government, and the private sector is shrinking,” Shearl said.
Shearl requested dropping the $4.5 million being put into the fund balance and the proposed property tax rate drop from 27 to 24 cents per $100 valuation. The current rate is 40 cents per $100 valuation. Roland said that would not be financially wise.
Higdon also expressed displeasure with the 1.62% growth factor figured into the property tax, which is scheduled to bring in $550,000 of the revenue, calling it a tool to extract funds from the citizens.
Higdon said he wasn’t happy with the budget going up $5.5 million from last year’s approved budget, which is the single largest increase in county history. Higdon said as a conservative Republican, he was against that increase on political grounds.
Antoine said there’s “hardly” anything in the budget for kids, specifically talking about capital improvements.
Roland then listed items in the budget that will benefit children such as the Molar Roller, funds for school nurses, and school resource officers, the education appropriation, the Department of Social Services, the Public Health Department, plus $2.1 million in capital improvements for Macon County Schools.
After more than five hours the board recessed the June 13 meeting and reconvened for Monday night’s vote.
The next regular Board of Commissioners meeting will be at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 11.