News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Van Buren County has approved its final budget and property tax rate for the fiscal year.
Mayor Greg Wilson said the comptroller’s office gave a tax rate recommendation of $2.3992, which the county rounded to $2.40. Wilson said this was the rate necessary to maintain current revenues.
Wilson said he’s optimistic about revenues.
“In the last few weeks, couple of months we have new businesses that are opening up,” Wilson said. “We’ve had about five here in the last 60 days that have opened up. That not only helps us with some sales tax but it also helps us broaden the tax base for property tax.”
Wilson said the county is in much better shape financially this year, after a rough year in solid waste and EMS. Wilson said when the fiscal year ended last year the county had a trial balance of $558,000 but will end this year at roughly $1.6 million.
“One thing that’s helped out is the TennCare payments have been increased by the state of Tennessee and we’re seeing a difference in that,” Wilson said. “So the projections that we made for EMS came really close to what we had projected. So we had to pay a little more attention to them in the budget this year. Our solid waste we actually took the property tax out of solid waste and redistributed that into EMS.”
Wilson said that discussions will begin about how to best use the county’s COVID relief money. Wilson the county will take its time on how to spend the $573,371 in this round of funding.
“Storm water is one thing that we could probably be able to use, also too is utilities,” Wilson said. “Which the County does not have any utilities, we don’t have a water department or a gas department or anything of that nature. So what we have to do is look at those things that are listed on there that are acceptable uses.”
