Information from WYSH Radio
The Anderson County Board of Education on Tuesday voted to approve a revised budget that, if approved as is, would require the equivalent of a 22-cent property tax increase.
The amended proposal adopted during a special-called meeting Tuesday still asks for 4 percent pay raises for school employees—who have not seen significant salary increases in the past six years—as well as $178,000 to pay for needed school roof repairs and state-mandated upgrades to physical education facilities and $178,000 to start a new program under which students would receive an electronic tablet.
The revised budget proposal includes several cuts to the original proposal, which would have necessitated the equivalent of a 56-cent tax increase.
School leaders said that over the past six years, system employees have seen only slight increases in their salaries, which do not keep up with the rate of inflation, hence the request for funding for raises.
But the budget proposal recommended by the Anderson County Budget Committee provides no new money for the school system, keeping their funding at current levels into the next year, and does not call for a tax increase.
The county budget will be the subject of a public hearing this evening (Thursday, May 28) at 6 p.m. in Room 312 of the Anderson County Courthouse in Clinton.
Information in this story brought to you through a news-sharing agreement between Oak Ridge Today and WYSH. See more local news headlines on the WYSH website at http://www.wyshradio.com/local_news.html.
Walter K Hyatt says
I think both Anderson County, Roane County and Oak Ridge need to ask for an immediate increase in the DOE Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILT). If they are going to ask the property owners for an increase, they should also ask DOE for a similar increase, which if granted could mitigate some of the increase on the property owners. I understand DOE is far more generous to their other “nuclear towns”….don’t be shy, ask!!
Dave Smith says
Your suggestion is contrary to the legal obligations of the DOE PILT to Manhattan Project-era communities such as Oak Ridge. If you truly want an increase in the PILT, then you should support a property tax increase because the PILT rises or falls with the property tax rate in Oak Ridge and Anderson County. Below I quote from a comment posted a couple of years ago on Oak Ridge Today by OR councilwoman Ellen Smith:
“DOE policy, department-wide, is that payments in lieu of property tax are based on the land use that existed when the government acquired the property. Accordingly, their PILT payments to the city and counties are based on our current tax rates and the assessed value of agricultural property in this area. They aren’t willing to budge on that policy, so there’s not much of a payoff in fighting for more PILT. PILT is not the only route for getting more money from DOE, though. Laws passed in the 1950s allow host communities of atomic energy sites to receive payments for the “special burdens” of being a DOE host community. About 10 years ago, there was a concerted effort (including the hiring of the Baker Donaldson law firm) to get DOE to pay Oak Ridge for “special burdens”, but the effort was abandoned for a variety of reasons (not all of which were good reasons), In recent years, the city and counties have benefited from property tax on private sector buildings at Y-12 and ORNL. DOE had several reasons for using the private sector to build new buildings that could be leased back to the government; one of their reasons was that it makes it possible to pay some tax to the local governments. Of course, the tax on a few buildings isn’t nearly what the governments would get if the entire Y-12 and ORNL sites were private property. At this point, I believe there’s a fear that rattling DOE’s cage over “special burdens” could jeopardize the tax arrangements for private-sector buildings.” –Ellen Smith, ca. May 12, 2013.
Note in particular the warning in the last sentence about “rattling DOE’s cage over ‘special burdens.'” ORNL and Y-12 are the two largest contributors of sales tax revenue in Anderson County. ORNL, in particular, pays sales (use) tax somewhat voluntarily since it is operated by UT-Battelle, a non-profit entity. I think it is a foolhardy strategy– based on ignorance of the law and a blatant call for a bigger handout from Uncle Sam–for folks to insist that DOE owes more money to our community. It smacks of asking US taxpayers to fund our city and county governments.
I’d like to see us pursue a strategy of requesting DOE to let go of more of the land grabbed 70 years ago under eminent domain, when doing so was in the national interest. And letting it go without attaching strings to its future use and profitability. In the past 30 years we’ve watched west Knox County grow by leaps and bounds because there was plentiful land available at low cost for residential and commercial development. At the same time, DOE released a few hundred acres here and a few hundred acres there in Oak Ridge, at a snail’s pace and with significant restrictions on land use.
Charlie Jernigan says
That makes perfect sense with the added issue being that when DOE releases land, it reduces the PILT proportionally so we have to be ready to take advantage of the property immediately or we get even less from them. So we don’t want the faucet open more than we can drink.
Which means we might want to put a cooperative plan together for future land use with streamlined release and transfer procedures along with improved industrial and commercial marketing.
WK Hyatt says
I do support property tax increases if reasonable to support education. But I do think the PILT needs revisiting, because it has been pretty flat and the legacy issues put OR and the counties at a tax disadvantage vs Knox Co. And the heresy of that statement is they acquired farm land at the time so they are getting off cheap these days. They still occupy quite a bit of land and what they are paying now is a sweet deal for them.
Angi Agle says
I wish the public hearing on the budget wasn’t on Oak Ridge’s graduation night; that almost guarantees that some of us can’t weigh in on it. Schools have been held to no-increase budgets for too long.
Mark Caldwell says
It’s hard for me to imagine why a reader would flag your comment as being inappropriate. It would appear to be an act of ignorance or meanest.