Commissioners set tax rate, spar with treasurer

Posted 9/21/16

Wood County Commissioners adopted a new budget and tax rate Thursday morning, but not without sharp remarks being traded between County Judge Bryan Jeanes and County Treasurer Becky Burford during …

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Commissioners set tax rate, spar with treasurer

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Wood County Commissioners adopted a new budget and tax rate Thursday morning, but not without sharp remarks being traded between County Judge Bryan Jeanes and County Treasurer Becky Burford during the public hearing.

Commissioners set the 2017 budget at $16,590,005, an increase over 2016 which was $15,159,005.

After the public hearing, commissioners adopted the new budget and approved the new tax rate. The tax rate was set at 60 cents per $100 valuation, an increase over the 2016 rate of 55 cents. But, the rate is lower than the effective tax rate of 61 cents per $100. The effective tax rate is the rate which will generate the same amount of revenue as the previous year. Property values were down significantly in the county due to the decrease in mineral values.

Jeanes read from the resolution, “It is necessary for the Wood County Commissioners Court to increase the tax rate by 9.85 percent in order to provide funds with which meet the budget requirements of the county and to pay expenses necessarily incurred in connection with services provided by the county to Wood County residents.”

“This tax rate does raise fewer taxes for us,” he went on to say.

At the public hearing prior to the budget and tax rate adoptions, Jeanes opened the floor for comments and Burford stepped to the microphone.

“I appreciate your diligence in setting the budget for the county. Basically this budget proposed is going down in history. I know it was a challenging budget. The budget is the most we ever budgeted before in county history,” claimed Burford. “It will be the highest tax rate the county has ever had while we’re sitting on a record amount of money. I, as a department head, have made a request, a request for my department to have another staff member for five years. It has been denied five years.

“I think it is time for the public to know that department heads are making requests that can’t be granted because of no funding, but yet the cash balance is at a high time high $16,650,000 after this budget.’

Jeanes responded to Burford. “I will respond if you like. In the first place we have been building that fund balance for an important reason and you are well aware of what it is, the protection and security for this county. We have done that with the intent of protecting the county and also to be able to do for this county that have been woefully left off,” the judge explained. “As for your department, we understand your needs and we have provided. You failed to mention we did give you a part-time position. We were not able to give you a full-time position. We did not justify a full-time position.”

Burford responded to the judge, “If you compare the fund balance, the cash balance at the end of 2010 budget, it was four million something, or four million, five hundred something. Comparing it to $16,000,000 something now, is a big increase in seven years.”

Jeanes came back with, “I know when I came to work for the county in 2003 it was woefully inadequate to cover expenses in this county and that is no longer the case.”

Pct. 2 Commissioner Jerry Gaskill made remarks about the increase in funds. “We have some money built up, but I can tell you right now and Russell (Acker) can speak for this. You go over there to the sheriff’s department and see what kind of money we are having to spend. We have facilities where we are looking at having to spend a lot of money,” Gaskill said. “That place, that building is going down. To me it is a money pit. It’s just some stuff we are going to have to spend money on. The security of this courthouse is very important. That’s a big step for us. We haven’t done it before and it’s time we do.”

Acker also spoke up about the needs of the county and at the county jail. “As a taxpayer for all these years, I appreciate this county has always stayed out of debt. The only way to stay out of debt is to have a large fund balance, you need more than two or three million dollars,” Acker noted. “I’ve got work over there now as I am in charge of public facilities at the jail. There are things going on with the plumbing and under the concrete that it may require that we may even have a new jail because we can’t fix it.”

“It has been repaired, and repaired and repaired. Right now it may be broken beyond repair to where we may have to do something totally different than what we are doing. And $3 or $4 million in the bank is not a drop in the bucket with the structures we have in this county. Plus, we have other equipment we use on these roads that have gone up from $100,000 to at least $500,000. We are using 1979 and 80 model equipment and it is wore out. If we only keep four million, we can go in the hole just buying equipment to maintain the roads. There is no reason to be borrowing money like these other counties.”

Pct. 3 Commissioner Roger Pace also had concerns about the jail. “The jail I have been noticing is over or just about at capacity. It comes to a point we are going to have to ship prisoners out or county or we are going to have to think about another expansion or something to alleviate that problem.”

Burford asked to respond. “We are fortunate, but some of the progress we have made is because of the department heads. Therefore, the credit is due to everyone working together as a team to make this county a better county. Also, the hard work that each commissioner does for their precinct and each department head does for their own is bringing in some more revenue to the county,” Burford said. “My office is bringing in more revenue than ever and that’s also a historical number. Yes, we are fortunate to have this and the groundwork was laid years ago to get to this point. All this progress cannot be laying on individual people’s backs. One position is not going to break the bucks.”

After more discussion Jeanes said, “I do take personal offense to anyone who suggests that this court in any way is accumulating too much money at the expense of our tax payers. I resent that insinuation. That is not the case.”

Jeanes said they are aware the commissioner’s court can’t keep up with everything in each department. “One thing I will praise about this county is every elected official and every department head work together. The main reason we are in this position is that we have people who work together for the betterment of this county and I praise each and every department head and employee.”