Executive Hopeful Budget Passes August 12

Overton County Executive Steven Barlow said he is hopeful that the county’s proposed budget will be passed as is by the County Commission during its August 12 meeting.

Tennessee requires counties to have an annual budget submitted by August 31. Barlow said the budget includes a 27-cent property tax increase, to pay for a $2 per hour raise for county employees as well as various operating costs that have increased because of inflation.

“So hopefully when we get together that we can agree upon this budget and go because everybody’s had a hand in it, everybody’s met to go over it and they’ve went over each every line item in June and so, with the proposal of what we have now,” Barlow said.

Barlow said that inflation has to be accounted for in their budget because it changes so quickly and affects so many different things that the county needs to pay for.

“The price of equipment, the price of breakdowns, the parts, and labor costs that we have when we have breakdowns and things of that nature,” Barlow said. “The total cost of operation, when you talk about inflation it’s also the price of paper, the price of ink.”

The budget includes some $20.65 million for the general fund, $2.85 million for solid waste and sanitation, and $6.46 million for highway and public works.

The county expected to collect some $9.9 million in property taxes.

Barlow said the county is currently operating on a continuation budget, which means they are using last year’s budget until the new one is completed.

“Some bills and things like that there was a little confusion as to, they was, somebody was confused about the insurance and things like that, but that was continued as well and nobody ran out of insurance,” Barlow said.

Barlow said part of the increase will cover their increasing solid waste expenses as they are spending $70,000 to $90,000 a month to haul trash to a dump outside of the county.

“I never would have dreamed that it would cost that much money to take the trash for the county off,” Barlow said. “But, you know, part of this goes into that operation as well.”