On Tuesday November 30, 2004, the county commission held a special meeting to discuss the current budget issues and the proposed tax hikes to cover the "hole" the county is in. The meeting went on for 2.5 hours so I will only summarize what was discussed and decided.

At issue: The county has already been operating at a pace where they were spending about 1 million dollars more than the money coming in. In addition to that, the last audit report from 2003 – 2004 has them in the hole by an additional $1,131,000. The previous amount was coming out of the fund balance (the county emergency fund), this new amount has no home as of yet. Most of this money was due to the Nursing home issue. The sale of the Nursing home has already been put into this year’s budget but the payment ($2 million) has not been received yet.

For the most part all of the commissioners agreed that there was no place to make further cuts to the current budget to make up this difference so they proposed moving forward with tax hikes. None of these have been approved yet. To date the commission has only looked at the county portion of the budget and have not discussed the "other" categories of school budget and highway department budget. These items are apparently off limits for this discussion.

First motion is to bring the wheel tax referendum to a vote at the December 6 meeting. This means that they will vote on whether or not to hold the special election for the wheel tax. This motion passed 9 yes 1 no.

Second motion was to bring a property tax hike to a vote at the December 6 meeting. This motion did not pass as it needed at least 7 yes votes and they only received 6. There was some discussion on this item though and it appears that at least one of the commissioners would be willing to change his vote since it was close. It was also noted that this tax is not dead and could be brought back up in the December 6 meeting. If this is brought up and passed it will make the new rate $3.06 per $100 of assessed value (roughly a $40 increase on a $80,000 home).

The next motion was number 2.5 as it was an amendment to the property tax hike. It was intended to adjust the property tax hike but was not officially worded so. The result would be to hold the county growth money (about 191K), change the way the county pays its bills and collects its debts to benefit cash flow, and defer the $485,000 of court house improvements until next budget year. This amendment, though not clear on the actual effect for the property taxes, passed with 7 yes and 3 no votes. This only means that the amendment will be brought back up if the property tax is brought back up.

The third motion was to implement a mineral service tax. I am not sure what this tax means but will try to find out. This new tax would bring in about $100,000. This motion would bring this tax up for a vote in the December 6 meeting. At that point it will need a 2/3 vote to pass. This motion passed 9 yes 1 no.

[ Agenda and Public Notice of Meeting ]

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