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Talk of using revenues from a wheel tax to capture millions of dollars in federal funding for road improvements surfaced at the Blount County Budget Committee work session Monday, but the idea went no further than discussion.

Highway Superintendent Bill Dunlap has been championing a six-year capital plan for improving roads. The plan calls for upgrades to Morganton Road for about $5 million, Old Niles Ferry Road for $5 million and Ellejoy Road for $7 million.

With Dunlap on hand to talk about his department's budget request and the need for significant investment in road projects, the committee discussed the idea of a wheel tax to help fund the needed improvements.

"It would be in the nature of an investment tax," County Mayor Jerry Cunningham said, adding a $10 per vehicle tax would generate about $1 million per year, which could be used as matching funds to bring in $4 million per year in federal grants.

Cunningham also said it should be possible to address taxpayer concerns about whether the wheel tax would keep increasing and last forever. "Why can't you build it into your resolution that it can't be raised?" he asked.

There was no official action on whether to propose a wheel tax at the meeting.

"That's up to the commission," Cunningham said. "If it comes up, I hope the commissioners would do what they're elected to do and make a decision on it, not pass it off to a referendum."

"I'll go on the record to say I support a wheel tax," Commissioner Kenneth Melton said. "We need to do something about the roads."

Request for SRO funds

"As Blount County Budget Committee ponders the shape of the proposed 2008-2009 fiscal year budget, Sheriff James Berrong is asking for more than $2 million extra to make deputy and correction officer pay more competitive and fund 13 new school resource officer positions.

Berrong is asking for about $400,00 in additional funds to hire new SROs. In the 2006-2007 budget, the sheriff's office had 22 people assigned to the SRO program on the books, but the number of SROs declined as they were transferred to other duties. In August 2007, there were about 10 or 11 officers in the schools.

Berrong said he moved the SRO officers to the patrol division to keep up with the demand for services caused by a growing population.

"That was a very unpopular decision," Berrong said.

"If you get this money, will there be a least one SRO in each school?" Commission Vice Chairman Steve Samples asked.

"Yes," Berrong said.

The bulk of the additional money that Berrong is seeking would go to salary increases to bring pay at the Sheriff's Office more in line with the city of Alcoa and Maryville's police departments, he said.

The 2007-2008 budget increased the starting salary for a deputy from $23,940 to $27,443, a 15 percent increase. The starting salary for a corrections officer increased from $21,715 to $26,133.

$41M draft budget

The Accounting Department has developed a draft $41 million general fund budget request that comes within $40,512 of being balanced. This draft includes a funding for a proposed 5 percent, merit-based raise for county employees, Finance Director Dave Bennett said.

There are, however, requests from several departments, asking commissioners to consider granting additional funds. The committee heard some of these requests on Monday, although no decisions were made.

"If we're going to add any of these, we're going to have to find additional monies to do that," Bennett said.

The draft budget does not include an increase in insurance rates for county employees. In November, the County Commission approved a contract with Cariten Healthcare to administer the county's self-paid health insurance program that is expected to save about $1.7 million. Commissioners chose to contract with Cariten instead of the former administrator, Nashville-based Health Cost Solutions, which offered lower fixed costs but couldn't compete on a network discount.

"We feel like the change we've made (switching) to Cariten will help us get through the year," Bennett said.

Still to be considered is how to deal with a nearly $7 million shortfall in currently projected revenues and the budget requests from Blount County Schools, which is opening the new Union Grove Elementary and Union Grove Middle School this year.

The county property tax rate is currently $2.23 per $100 of assessed value.