Overton County Budget Passed, Property Tax Rate Remains The Same

The Overton County Commission passed its $50 million budget at Monday night’s meeting.

County Executive Ben Danner said the property tax rate will remain the same at $1.9706 per thousand. Danner said increased county sales tax revenue allowed the property tax rate to stay the same for the sixth straight year.

“2014 to now we’re almost triple what the sales tax amount was,” Danner said. “Now last year was our biggest year ever, we hit over $2 million in sales tax. Which I would have never imagined, used to be we hit $500,000 a year and that was a big year. Last year was $2 million, this year already we’re up 40 percent over what we were last year at this point.”

Danner said that sales tax revenue through online sales have been a boost to the county despite fears of revenue losses during the pandemic. Danner said that sales tax revenue, along with state and federal money is allowing the county to target multiple capital projects.

“We’re looking at doing some air conditioning upgrades here at the courthouse, adding onto the ambulance service,” Danner said. “We’re looking at doing some water projects. I would like to be doing some highway projects but they wont let us use that (federal funding) for the highway.”

Danner said that an ambulance and a new employee were able to be added to the department, as well as six new patrol cars for the sheriff’s department. Danner said that strong revenues has helped the county make additions like this a habit.

“At one time we used to go 10 years without buying a patrol car or an ambulance,” Danner said. “That’s way too long, we’re taking runs all over the place, taking people from here to Nashville and we need better equipment to do that. We’ve got on a rotation doing that, which it costs a little more every year when we do that but we’ve gotten into a position where we’re saving money other places.”

Danner said that there were very few places commissioners made cuts but made cuts where they could on what he called a “bare bones” budget. Danner said there was an emphasis to use the $2.3 million in federal funding where it could instead of using tax payer dollars for 2021-2022.