The Bedford County Board of Commissioners passed the fiscal year 2023-24 budget and the $2.32 property tax rate Thursday but not without a few objections.
The $2.32 rate was set last year, increasing the previous rate of $1.97. But some commissioners would have liked to see that rate go down to $2.17.
A motion was set by Commissioner Eric Maddox for the decrease; the motion failed with 4 ayes and 14 nays.
“Those 15 pennies could have been cut and the county could still run efficiently,” Maddox told the T-G.
During the meeting, Maddox said, “I know that it takes money to operate county business. It’s not free and neither are the services, but based on our revenue sources, it should be affordable to all…There are things listed in this budget that are nice to have…We’ve got a fire marshal. Do we really need it? There’s $100,000 for the Shelbyville Partnership Economic Development fund. Do we really need it? Do we really need people making six figures on our county payroll…Some of you people feel these things are needed, but I’ve got people in my district that don’t even have clean drinking water.”
After Maddox’s motion failed, the $2.32 rate passed unanimously.
Commissioner Linda Yockey, who made the motion to pass the current tax rate, said, “This budget is not perfect, but there are a lot of things in there. Things that will keep us going so that we don’t make mistakes that we’ve made in the past, such the raises for the employees so that we don’t get in the fix that we were in last year.”
Yockey emphasized the budget’s allowance for a new juvenile center, SROs in schools, and the expansion of The Liberty School, which will all go toward bettering the education system in Bedford County.
A motion was also made by Commissioner Bill Anderson to unbundle the categories of budget expenditures. This would allow for each category to be individually voted on, invoking a conflict of interest, which would decrease the number of votes needed.
Some commissioners, like Commissioner Drew Hooker, were in favor of this, “I think it’s extremely important that we unbundle these…because there are individual things that we have the ability to talk to and talk directly about when we unbundle it…If we don’t do that, then what we’re saying is that each individual line item is really not important as long as the tax rate doesn’t adjust.”
Others, like Commissioner Greg Vick, disagreed, saying, “We have worked on this budget; it is not a month-long project, it’s not a two-week project. It is a 52-week project. A budget doesn’t start on day one, it continues on through the year. Those of us who attend the budget hearings understand where the items go…We debate, and we continually question at all of our budget meetings how we arrive at this number…Since February we’ve worked on this…”
He continued, “This is nothing more than finding a way to line-item veto things in our budget and it’s not necessary and we can’t do it. We are prohibited from having a line-item veto.”
The motion to unbundle failed 8 to 10.
The final revenue stream for each fund category under the $2.32 property rate goes as follows:
General - $1.43
Highway/Public Works - $0.09
General Purpose School - $0.62
General Debt Service - $0.15
County capital Projects - $0.0352