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The Blount County Commission on Thursday approved a 5-cent property tax hike and $39.6 million budget for the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

The county property tax rate will be increased to $2.23 per $100 of assessed value.

The current rate is $2.18 per $100.

The County Commission approved the tax increase by a vote of 12-9.

Commissioners Tonya Burchfield, Gary Farmer, Brad Harrison, Mark Hasty, Scott Helton, John Keeble, Gerald Kirby, Holden Lail, Mike Lewis, Kenneth Melton, Robert Ramsey and Steve Samples voted yes.

Commissioners David Ballard Jr., Ron French, David Graham, Steve Hargis, Joe McCulley, Monika Murrell, Robert Proffitt, Wendy Pitts Reeves and Mike Walker voted no.

“We can do what we need to do with this budget without raising taxes,” Reeves said, prior to the vote.

The County Commission approved the $39.6 million budget 13-8.
Commissioners Burchfield, Farmer, Harrison, Hasty, Helton, Keeble, Kirby, Lail, Lewis, Melton, Ramsey, Samples and Walker voted yes.

Commissioners Ballard, French, Graham, Hargis, McCulley, Murrell, Proffitt and Reeves voted no.

The budget includes a maximum 5 percent, performance-based raise for county employees, which costs about $1 million to budget.

According to Assistant Deputy Chief for Administration Jeff French, the starting salary for a deputy will increase from $23,940 to $27,443, a 15 percent increase. The starting salary for a corrections officer will increase from $21,715 to $26,133.

Deputy Chief Ron Dunn will get a 3 percent raise, all the assistant chiefs will get a 4 percent raise and middle level officers will receive a 9 percent raise.

“The key is going to be maintaining our pay scale,” French said. “We’ve got to start somewhere.”

The commission heard from several community members prior to the votes.

Linda King of Citizens for Blount County’s Future told commissioners they need to do a better job safeguarding taxpayer money.

“You know our taxpayer dollars are not being spent as efficiently as they could be,” she said.

King also told the commissioners that county residents were already burdened by taxes.

“Between paying increased state and federal taxes, the middle class is being squeezed out,” she said.

County resident Larry Shore said much the same.

“We need to do a better job of managing our business,” he said. “We maybe are still overspending. We seem to be running this county as if we were a bunch of rich folks and there was no end to the money.”

Dick Scott, another audience member, supported the increase.

“I rise to speak in support of the property tax increase to provide an increase to the sheriff’s deputies,” he said. “... If there ever was a true inequity, it’s the difference in pay between Maryville, Alcoa and the Blount County Sheriff’s Department. It should be addressed.”

Rick Baker of the Sheriff’s Office told the commissioners that the Sheriff’s Office employees are not in the job to get rich.

“When you knock on the door in the wee hours of the morning to tell the mom and dad that their son or daughter isn’t coming home, it’s not a job,” he said. “It’s a calling.”

Commissioner Walker took the opportunity to praise the restraint of county officeholders during the current fiscal year.

“For the first time in at least a 20-year period, there was no fund balance used,” he said. “It’s not impossible to live within a budget. The county officials have done so at the expense of the county employees because ... they didn’t get a cost of living increase.”

In other business, the commission approved a $656,800 budget transfer for the Sheriff’s Office, which moves funds from vacant position salaries to pay for cost overruns in gasoline and medical care and other items.

Murrell questioned the transfer of school resource officer funds.

“We made up shortfalls where our budget was cut $183,000 last year,” Sheriff James Berrong said. “We moved the SRO officers out to put them in the patrol division ... our needs have had to shift based on service calls.”

The County Commission did not approve budget appeals from Blount County Schools, which asked for an additional $4 million, and the Sheriff’s Office, which sought an additional $1.7 million.

Blount County Schools Director Alvin Hord said the new basic education program (BEP) funding the system will receive from the state has strings attached.

“They are going to tell us next week where we can spend the $1.2 million,” he said. “It’s a rather precarious position we find ourselves in.”