Tax Increase Proposed For Van Buren

The Van Buren County Budget Committee will propose a property tax increase.

Budget Committee chairman William Maxwell announced the decision without providing the total increase following Monday’s budget work session.

“I know nobody likes a tax increase,” Maxwell said. “But we must pay for what we have. If we’re not willing to pay for the services we have, we must live with some inconveniences, and we don’t know what those inconveniences would be if we’re not willing to pay for them.”

Maxwell said if the county is unable to reach a balanced budget, the Tennessee Comptroller’s office would take over the county’s finances. He said the comptroller will not raise taxes to eliminate a budget deficit of almost $400,000, so county services would be cut drastically.

“We have constitutionally mandated things, and that’s all that will be operated,” Maxwell said. “We’re constitutionally mandated to provide the office holders, the elected officials. We are not constitutionally mandated to provide their deputy clerks in their offices, so they would not have a job. There would be no service to 911. The county would not contribute to 911 for their contract to dispatch, so there would be no dispatcher for the county. The ambulance service would be out of business. That is not a constitutionally mandated business, so we would not have that.”

Other affected operations, according to Maxwell, would include fire service. Although Van Buren County has a volunteer fire service, Maxwell said 10-cents of each tax dollar goes to pay for insurance and to pay bills for the department. Solid Waste would be cut to a minimum, with likely only one county location remaining open.

Maxwell said unaffected departments would include the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Department. As a constitutionally mandated department, he said the county commission cannot cut its funding without the sheriff’s permission.

“The jail and the Sheriff’s Office are run under what is called a Maintenance of Effort,” Maxwell said. “We could not decrease those funds that are budgeted to those offices unless the Sheriff agrees to it. The Sheriff would have to agree to cut positions in his office in order for us to help our budget. We cannot cut his employees, and that is by state statute.”

Last month the Tennessee General Assembly set aside $638,000 in unrestricted money to Van Buren County. Maxwell said instead of using those funds to balance the budget, it will be used to increase the county’s general fund.

“That is non-reoccurring funds,” Maxwell said. “We will only get that one time, so once that’s gone, we would be right back in the same situation. We would actually be just kicking the ball right back down the road a couple of years, and we would not be any better off than we are today. That $600,000 will be used for cash flow so we don’t have to have tax anticipation loans each year to make it to tax time.”

Maxwell said there are four or five months out of the year when Van Buren County has no cash flow and is dependent on its fund balance to pay for operations. He said the state money will help the county make it to November, when property tax money starts to come due.

Maxwell said it was not one thing that led to the county’s financial struggles. He listed a number of added expenses that have not be accounted for in the budget.

“We built a new jail facility and increased our correction officers in that facility,” Maxwell said. “We doubled the amount of officers we had, and that cost us $192,000 just for correction officers alone. We also had food service workers that were doubled in order to feed our inmates, and that was $43,395. All that added together, those three things: correction officers, food service workers, and 10-years of elected officials raises, that equals $408,779 that we have not raised revenues to make up the differences for.”

The Van Buren County Commission will meet Tuesday night to consider the county’s 2020-2021 budget.