By Katie Northcott, News Director
At its meeting on Thursday, June 4, the Coffee County Budget & Finance Committee passed a budget proposal for FY27. The proposal will be reviewed by the full County Commission at its meeting on Tuesday, June 9.
The budget proposal grants project requests from county department heads and includes a 2% pay increase for county employees. However, the budget would leave the county at around a $1.3 million deficit for FY27.
“In this budget that we are $1.314 million short, it does have added things that the department heads asked for though,” Committee Chairman Tim Morris said. “We’ve added more spending than we did last year. … We are not flat out like we were last year. We are spending more money for more things that are needed to operate our county government.”
The county also plans to finance new cars for the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department at a cost of around $325,000 through the county’s debt service fund.
Morris emphasized that the $1.3 million number is a projection. He said that the county has $9 million in reserve funds that can cover the deficit.
Though the committee discussed a property tax increase at its previous meeting, Morris proposed no tax increase in his motion to adopt the budget proposal. County Mayor Dennis Hunt said that the Property Assessor’s recent property value reappraisal resulted in an approximate increase of $32.5 million in assessed property value countywide.
The state will set a certified tax rate to adjust for the reappraisal. Hunt said he thought the rate would be about 1.4228%, meaning the county will see about a $460,000 increase property tax revenue.
“Just so everybody knows growth does not pay for itself entirely,” Hunt said. “Everybody needs to understand that. All this new growth is only raising a half a million bucks.”
Commissioner Tim Brown made a motion to amend Morris’s motion to include a 5% pay increase for county employees. His motion failed. Morris’s original motion to pass the budget proposal with a 2% pay increase passed 6-2 (Brown and Commissioner Todd Malone opposed).
Malone plans to propose a 3% pay increase for county employees at the full County Commission meeting on Tuesday, June 9.
