State budget woes could hurt county: Cuts could snatch over $500K from county and city
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The situation has prompted County Executive Kenneth Rogers to draft a letter to county commissioners, elected officials and government department heads to cut their budgets by 5 percent in an effort to soften the blow from lost state-shared funds and avoid a property tax increase.
Rogers received information from the Tennessee Association of County Executives delineating the effect of the cuts on Tennessee’s city and county governments.
“According to what we got yesterday,” Rogers said, “what they’re going to cut in the tax sharing with state revenue is $282,148 from Warren County. And that alone will be, if we have to come up with it with local money, without other ideas, that would be an 8-cent property tax increase,” Rogers said.
Rogers said dealing with the budget cuts at the state level might involve some creative methods for producing revenue.
“We’ve had some controversy with the sheriff’s cars,” he said, referring to recent plans to sell advertising space on the trunks of the vehicles. “This is what we’re being faced with right now. We’ve got to come up with some new ideas of how to raise money to provide the service the people of Warren County deserve, without putting the burden on the taxpayer.”
Rogers hopes requiring the cuts across the board with every department will encourage legislators and department heads to trim their budgets with an eye to running more efficiently rather than cutting programs.
“You’ve got to have the road department. You’ve got to have the sheriff’s department. You’ve got to have sanitation. You’ve got to have the ambulance service. You’ve got to have administration, got to have the courts, education,” Rogers said. “Those are things you’ve got to have.
“But yet, can we operate more efficiently,” he added.
He mentioned rapidly rising fuel costs as one of the things he is interested in trying to minimize.
“A lot of times we can cut out an extra trip,” he said. “And make every trip count.”
Even though he hopes to stave off a property tax increase with these types of measures, he admits that some areas, like local charities, may suffer the effects of budget woes.
“We’re going to have to disappoint people,” he said. “We’re going to have to say no.”
He says he hopes to keep that to a minimum, but admits there will probably be some cuts.
Rogers says the state budget woes will at least be somewhat democratic in nature with cities and counties across the state suffering the effects.
“Nobody has an easy answer,” he said.