City, schools to present budgets to Council today

Note: This story was updated at 9:23 a.m.

The municipal and school budgets will be presented to the Oak Ridge City Council during a meeting this evening (Monday, June 1).

The municipal budget will be presented by Oak Ridge City Manager Mark Watson. The schools budget will be presented by Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Bruce Borchers.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. today in the Oak Ridge Municipal Building Courtroom at 200 South Tulane Avenue. See the agenda here.

City officials have been striving to present a budget that does not include a property tax rate increase. But it wasn’t clear as of last week if that would be possible because of a dramatic drop in sales tax revenues from the Roane County portion of the city.

Meanwhile, the Oak Ridge Board of Education on Tuesday approved a budget that would use $1.75 million from the school system’s fund balance and ask the city for about $650,000. That’s the equivalent of about a six-cent tax rate increase. School officials are hoping to cover a deficit of roughly $638,000 and meet a total of $1.75 million in other desired expenses, or “additional investment,” that include 3 percent pay raises with benefits, step increases based on experience, and money for staff, including a communications director, four technology-related positions, and a teacher’s assistant for an elementary behavioral class.

Still unknown is how the five-year property reappraisals in Anderson and Roane counties will affect the tax rate in Oak Ridge. It’s not clear that Oak Ridge will know the outcome of the Roane County reappraisals until after July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

But officials have said there might be an increase in Anderson County because of an overall 4 percent drop in property assessments, including homes, farmland, businesses, and industries.

Here’s part of an April column by Anderson County Property Assessor John K. Alley Jr. that explains that:

Reappraisal assessments will primarily be based upon qualified real estate sales from January 1, 2014, to January 1, 2015.

A new certified tax rate will be determined by the executive secretary of the State Board of Equalization. The new certified tax rate will be determined toward the end of the local appeals, typically in July.

Since the total assessment decreased, and in order to ensure the same level of funding for county and city government, the certified tax rate will see an increase. The opposite occurred during the 2010 reappraisal: With values increasing more than 20 percent, there was a decline in the certified tax rate, so there would not be an increase in tax funds.

The new certified tax rate will be adjusted up or down to the point that the taxing jurisdiction will receive the same amount of property tax revenue as it did the previous year, prior to the reappraisal. Jurisdictions cannot use the reappraisal to generate new tax revenue.

Any tax rate different than the certified tax rate, which is determined by the State Board of Equalization, must be approved by the local legislative body, which are city councils for Oak Ridge, Clinton, Norris, Oliver Springs, and Rocky Top, as well as the Anderson County Board of Commissioners.

Separate from the reappraisals and their impact on the certified tax rates, officials in Clinton and Roane County are considering possible tax rate increases, and educators in Anderson County have asked for the equivalent of a 22-cent tax rate increase to help pay for 4 percent pay raises for all employees and technology initiatives and capital projects.

There will be a public hearing on the Oak Ridge budget on Monday, June 8, and City Council will consider it on first reading then. The second and final reading will be Monday, June 15.

The Anderson County budget will be presented to the Anderson County Commission on Monday, June 15.

In Roane County, there will be a public hearing and work session on the budget for next year on Tuesday, June 2. The public hearing starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Qualls Commission Room at the Roane County Courthouse in Kingston. The Roane County Budget Committee will meet after that public hearing, and then the Roane County Commission will meet in a work session to discuss the FY 2016 budget, also in the Qualls Commission Room at the Courthouse in Kingston.

All these meetings are open to the public.

More information will be added as it becomes available.