Commissioners adopt budget

Jack County adopted its FY 17 budget and set its tax rate to fund it during a Tuesday meeting.

An effective tax rate of 45.14 cents per $100 was approved, the same rate as last year. With a $206 million drop in tax rolls, commissioners were forced to cut more than $250,000 from the budget to keep from raising the tax rate beyond the effective rate, County Judge Mitchell Davenport said. The general rate is 35.95 cents with maintenance and operation coming in at 29.79 cents and interest and sinking at 6.15. The special (road and bridge) rate is 9.19 cents.

The budget itself came in at $7,723,278. Commissioners spent much of the last month working with department heads on cutting the budget to avoid a tax increase. 

Individual bills for homeowners and businesses can go up or down, depending on their evaluation from the county, Davenport said.

The effective rate will generate the same amount of tax dollars as last year, Davenport said.

This year’s budget will have no raises for employees this year, except for retired employees, who received a 20-percent increase after not having an increase since 2008, Davenport said. 

“Before that, I think the last increase was 1995 or so,” Davenport said.

County Clerk Vanessa James and District Clerk Tracie Pippin spoke to consider a plan for the District and County Clerk’s Technology Fund for the preservation and restoration of both offices’ records.

Davenport said users of both offices, under state law, pay a fee when they file something in the office. Those funds go toward preservation of county records. Those records that were in books are in the process of being microfilmed or electronically preserved.

The state funds from those projects run out in 2019, after which to continue doing that, funds will have to come out of the county budget. Commissioners approved using the monies for their purpose. 

As part of the meeting, the county set employee holidays for the courthouse employees including Election Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, President’s Day, Good Friday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day and the employee’s birthday.