I hope everyone is ok. I took this video in the VA. I don’t know any details.
http://johnsoncitypress.com/News/article.php?id=100269
http://www.wcyb.com/news/31058860/detail.html
http://www2.tricities.com/news/2012/may/13/warehouse-fire-johnson-city-ar-1911987/
The Washington County Highway Department has spent $30,000 and plans to spend about $32,000 more during a meeting at the budget committee on Wednesday morning. After reading the monthly packet for commissioners, I realized that the highway department is requesting that we retroactively fund a project out of their fund balance. This is a major problem for multiple reasons:
1) They have spent money out of line items not specified for this project.
2) This is a foreseen expense. The project was planned and is not an emergency. It could have easily made it’s way to the budget committee before it was started.
3) By approving this project we are condoning the irresponsible behavior of spending and then asking for permission.
We have office holders who work very hard to be upfront with their expenses and be punctual with their line item transfers and requests. Sheriff Graybeal, for example, has done an excellent, and we should encourage others to follow his example. If we approve this proposal, we will seriously damage are ability to hold the line on spending. This is a precedent that we cannot afford to set.
The proposal for a full-time attorney has significantly changed this month. From my understanding, the changes include shifting the process of appointing an attorney from the Mayor to the commission, the advisory committee is optional, the salary is not set, and the provision for a 2/3 vote has been taken out. All in all, it appears to be a much more flexible and less binding resolution. The mayor adamantly opposed this at the steering committee meeting.
I am inclined to support this proposal for the following reasons:
1) The mayor never voiced specific reasons of why he was opposed to the changes. His main point was that the office holders hadn’t been informed of the changes. He said it was changing everything, but never gave any specifics of it changing anything or why the changes were bad.
2) The mayor said that he would bring “numbers” to support his proposal and show that it is cost-effective. I’m not aware of any numbers that he has shared with commissioners.
3) From my understanding of the resolution, this gives us an option to change the position of county attorney but does not bind us to any decisions.
4) I see this as moving forward on something that could potentially save taxpayers money.
When the joint Washington County Education Committee met in January, they moved that county attorney John Rambo explore options regarding possible litigation involving the state education funding.
According to a TACIR report, it is impossible to fund a county school system equal with a city school school system. The report also suggests that there is a disparity in funding between cities/counties that is created in heavy retail areas. The largest of these disparities is in Washington County.
This is a developing issue and one that will garner much more attention in the coming months.
The mayor, with the assistance of county attorney John Rambo, has developed a proposal to be voted on as a Private Act in the general assembly. The proposal is the foundation for moving the County Attorney into a full-time position for the county.
The Mayor Eldridge expressed that currently Mr. Rambo is not able to commit 100% of his time to the services of the county, and “we need 100%.”
Though he could not speak to the costs, the mayor committed to provide a cost analysis before the next oversight meeting.
I stopped in on the county owned property meeting. It seemed like a productive meeting. Two exciting savings opportunities are coming up:
1) Savings on electricity: with money from a grant that the mayor’s office was working on, we will be able to save a significant amount money on electricity. The last I can remember, we spend between $700k and $800k annually for electricity. If we can find savings of 10% to 20% we could save well over $100k. The credit goes to Mayor Eldridge and Willie Shrewsbury for that.
2) Solid Waste: We spend around $500k on solid waste. Long story short, by bidding this out, we could save an estimated $200k. That’s good news. We’ll see what happens with this.
updated from iPhone
Above you will see the payback schedule for debt service through the end of this decade. It’s pretty obvious to see why I was critical of the restructuring proposal. We carved out money for our term and left the next commission with the task of finding more money to put into debt service.
While I still have issues with this, I believe the motive behind the restructuring was to buy time to find savings in other areas. This means that the ultimate ‘right or wrong’ decision won’t be known until the next commission sends us a sarcastic ‘thank you’ for the shape we leave them in. However, it should be noted that the revenue exceeds expenditures significantly through fiscal 2013-14 which will soften any need to provide immediate additional funding.
This shows some signs of respect provided we don’t decide to pull out additional revenue from the debt service fund this year.
1) Sales Tax Referendum was approved.
2) The Washington County Commission voted unanimously to support Jonesborough in pushing for an agreement with the state. The plan would take state sales tax revenue from a specific area in downtown Jonesborough and invest it in tourism. It sounds like an excellent idea. It will NOT cost the tax payers any additional money and it could prove to provide a significant economic boost to all of Washington County. Kudos to Mathew Hill and Kelly Wolfe for working on the plan.
The title of the resolution speaks for itself: “A RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE CREATING A COURTHOUSE SQUARE REVITALIZATION AND TOURISM DEVELOPMENT ZONE IN JONESBOROUGH AND RETURNING STATE SALES TAX DOLLARS COLLECTED WITHIN THE ZONE TO FUND NEEDED IMPROVEMENTS”
3) Debt Management Policy unanimously approved.
The debt management policy was unanimously approved. This was a state mandate and the county is required to send this to the comptroller. This is an excellent policy. Mayor Eldridge and the budget committee did an excellent job on this.
The budget committee met multiple times and spent many hours looking over a debt policy for the county. As I understand it, this is part of a requirement to keep our bond rating. However, the last section of the policy states:
“Review of the Policy
The debt policy guidelines outlined herein are only intended to provide general
direction regarding the future use and execution of debt. A violation of the County
Legislative Body’s debt policy shall in no way be interpreted as a violation of law and shall
have no bearing on the validity of debt issued by the County Legislative Body. The County
Legislative Body maintains the right to modify these guidelines (except to the extent these
guidelines are mandated by applicable state law or regulation) and may make
exceptions to any of them at any time to the extent that the execution of such debt achieves
the County Legislative Body’s goals. Any exceptions to these policies shall be expressly
acknowledged in the resolution authorizing the pertinent debt issue. In the event of a
conflict between the terms of a debt resolution and this policy, the terms of the debt
resolution shall control.
This policy will be periodically reviewed by the Director of Accounts and Budgets. The
Director of Accounts and Budgets may at any time present recommendations for any
amendments, deletions, additions, improvements or clarifications”
I’m concerned that there is no enforcement mechanism and no consequence for ignoring it. The budget committee worked very hard for this. My fear is that this policy will begin to collect dust as soon as it is passed. I hope I’m wrong. Read the full debt management policy on page 34 – 50 of the pdf.
I found this in the County Audit report. Pretty interesting…
| Company Name |
# of Employees |
Rank |
| MSHA |
3,541 |
1 |
| ETSU |
2,330 |
2 |
| Citi Cards |
1,950 |
3 |
| VA |
1,592 |
4 |
| Advanced Call Center |
1,400 |
5 |
| Washington County Schools |
1,200 |
6 |
| American Water Heater |
1,170 |
7 |
| City of Johnson City |
853 |
8 |
| Johnson City Schools |
832 |
9 |
| AT&T |
650 |
10 |