Local Gov’t Budget to be Approved June 3

originally published May 21, 2008

A tax increase proposed by Mayor Heidi Davison to support anti-poverty initiatives is not flying with ACC Commissioners, and last week they began looking for other places to cut her proposed $109 million budget. “For three years now,” the Mayor wrote in an email asking citizens to support a 3.9 percent property tax increase, “we have talked in this community about alleviating poverty.” And in response to recommendations by the OneAthens initiative, she said, next year’s budget includes more frequent bus service on two routes, as well as teen pregnancy and affordable housing programs.

Commissioners do not appear inclined to cut those programs, but ever-rising tax bills may have reached a tipping point with citizens and commissioners both. “When I received my tax assessment, I thought it was a little bit of a joke at first,” citizen Wilbert Pope told commissioners last week. State law requires counties to re-evaluate (“reassess”) property values every year; and when those values rise - as they have consistently done in Clarke County - so do owners’ tax bills.

After commissioners balked at the proposed tax hike, ACC Manager Alan Reddish asked department heads to find places to cut, and he went to commissioners last week with a menu of choices. Reduce the number of county police at football games? That would mean more illegal parking (and more cars towed), Reddish said, but it would save $90,000 a year. Commissioners didn’t like that option, preferring to eliminate a police records clerk - and perhaps a clerk at the tag office. A commission suggestion to close the bars at midnight seemed to be a non-starter, but knocking down employee raises to 2.5 percent (from a proposed 3 percent) looked better.

Maintenance inspections of sidewalks and curbs could be reduced, Reddish suggested, saving $70,000; eliminating a Fire Department ladder company would save over $200,000; leaf-and-limb pickup could be reduced to every eight weeks, and mowing along roads could be less frequent; swimming pools could be open fewer days. The county could stop using biodiesel fuel “until price lowers,” the replacement period for hand tools could be extended, travel allowances and printing costs reduced, an assistant in the Manager’s office done without, training programs and new office equipment could be reduced - and the solicitor general suggested reducing his own salary. Reddish offered dozens of such options, totaling over $2 million; at a work session May 15 commissioners strived to pick enough to save $1.75 million and eliminate a tax-rate hike. “These are hard choices to make,” said Commissioner Carl Jordan. The new budget year begins July 1; commissioners are expected to pass a budget on June 3.

County officials are quick to insist that tax rates are lower in Athens than in many Georgia cities - at least for homes of equal dollar value. Athens-Clarke’s tax rate has actually gone down since 2003, and even with the Mayor’s proposed increase would still be slightly lower than it was then. But even without rate hikes, taxes have continually gone up for most citizens. “I’m just hearing from so many people that their tax assessment went up so much,” Commissioner Kathy Hoard said last month. Adding a rate increase on top of that would be “extremely hurtful,” she said. Elton Dodson agreed that citizens shouldn’t be hit with higher taxes during a recession. And in neighborhoods that are redeveloping or gentrifying, some older residents are being taxed out of their homes, ACC Tax Commissioner Nancy Denson said last year. The local school district has frozen property taxes for homeowners over 65, Denson said, and the general government could do the same based on age or income. But while ACC Commissioners have occasionally talked about offering some such tax relief, they have taken no action.

Commissioner Carl Jordan has suggested that the county’s 35 departments should justify their budgets every year, item-by-item, a practice known as “zero-based budgeting.” ACC Finance Director John Culpepper thinks that may not be practical - when it was tried at the state level by then-governor Jimmy Carter, “they ended up with way too much information,” Culpepper tells Flagpole. “I think the best way that zero-based budgeting could be looked at is - not as a part of the budget process - but just as a part of an evaluation of [a] department’s functions and operations in advance of preparing a budget,” he says. That isn’t now being done systematically, Culpepper says; and he declines to suggest places where cuts might be considered. “I really don’t think that’s my job to do that - I might advise my manager of what that might be,” he said.

ACC Auditor John Wolfe does study the efficiency of specific government operations when directed to do so by the Commission. In the past year, he has reported on airport operations, soil erosion enforcement, and downtown parking fees, and is now studying staffing levels at the Community Protection Division. The biggest part of this year’s budget increase will go for higher fuel costs and employee salaries and benefits, he says. The number of county employees has increased as the county has grown, but it has not increased faster than the population. The ACC government has had about 14 employees per thousand residents since the county and city governments were combined in 1991. And county employees have been getting pay raises of between 2 percent and 4 percent yearly, an amount based on U.S. Labor Department statistics on what government employees are paid nationally. Those raises are comparable to raises at UGA, which tend to be merit-based and vary with what the state legislature allocates, but will probably average about 3 percent this year, says UGA Community Relations Director Pat Allen.

John Huie

jphuie@athens.net