CLINTON—The Anderson County Commission endorsed a budget Thursday that lowers the property tax rate, gives employees a day off, and is supposed to provide enough money to pay for jailers hired in the past year while allowing the sheriff to hire new ones for a jail addition that could open later this year.
The budget would also restore some funding for the relatively new Alternatives to Incarceration program, which Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank had proposed cutting by 80 percent, and add money to cover the cost of increased health insurance premiums for county employees.
The budget was endorsed in a 12-1-1 vote during a special meeting Thursday, the second this week. It could officially be adopted during the County Commission’s regular meeting on Monday.
The proposed property tax reduction of about one-third of a penny would lower the rate to $2.347 per $100 of assessed value in Oak Ridge, $2.50 in Clinton, and $2.529 in Lake City, Oliver Springs, Norris, and Anderson County.
It was a small but symbolic gesture, Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank said.
Commissioners were able to give back some money because they raised the projected growth in property tax revenues to one percent. The budget would use $92,000 of that projected increase to boost funding for Alternatives to Incarceration to $150,000. Frank had proposed cutting the program, which recently lost its director, from $280,000 to $58,000, using the savings to hire new jailers.
About $45,000 of the new revenues generated through the increased tax revenue projection would be returned to taxpayers through the rate reduction.
Much of the discussion during the two special meetings this week has focused on whether the budget included enough money for the Anderson County Sheriff’s Department to hire more than 30 jailers for the 212-bed addition to the Anderson County Detention Facility in Clinton. It also included debate about whether the budget covered up to 18 jailers hired in the past year, primarily for a new jail dormitory that has already opened.
Anderson County Sheriff Paul White said those 18 existing employees need to be covered before he can even consider opening the jail addition, which by itself would require 36 new jailers.
Frank and Anderson County Budget Director Chris Phillips had come up with a three-part plan to add $750,000 to hire 15 jailers for the Detention Facility addition. But since the jail expansion might not open until December or January—or about half a fiscal year—county officials reasoned that they could double the number of jailers that the $750,000 would cover, pushing the estimate to more than 30 new employees.
Anderson County Commissioner Myron Iwanksi, who was interim mayor during budget deliberations last year, assured fellow commissioners and the sheriff that the number of jailers authorized last year for the dormitory—he said the real number is 13 rather than 18—are covered under the county budget.
“I don’t think there is a problem,†Iwanski said. “We’re saying we’re going to cover it.â€
Still unresolved is the question of what will have to be done next year to pay for the extra three dozen or so jailers expected to be hired for the jail addition completed later this year.
The paid day off approved this week was offered in lieu of a pay increase.
The next fiscal year starts July 1.
More information could be added later.
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