Commission Notes

(Editor’s Note: The following review of 2005 was prepared by Jasper County Commission Chairman Jack Bernard and submitted for publication. The other commissioners do not sign off on the articles Mr. Bernard periodically submits for publication.)
By Jack Bernard

Finances and Efficiency

2005 was a year of great change for Jasper County. The majority of the County Commission was replaced, as well as many committee members. The new members of the BOC were elected on a reform platform, pledging that we would contain property tax increases, which had been averaging 10 percent per year.

New directions were implemented at a hectic pace; we had a lot of success and we succeeded in holding down tax increases to 1.7 percent while adding a number of new services like code enforcement and animal control.

This is the first of two columns, which will summarize where we have been and are going regarding a few of these initiatives. This first column deals with finances and efficiency, key to understanding our status.

Finances

The new BOC inherited serious financial problems and, therefore, requested and received a full independent outside audit for 2004. Among other things, the new auditor showed that the prior BOC had overspent $887,220 in 2004 due to a failure to control expenses and accurately project revenues.

Furthermore, the auditor was unable to say exactly where we are financially in relation to curbside garbage pick-up in that records for 2004 were in complete disarray. The audit also showed that many other county operations had been problematic for a number of years. For instance, the landfill has been a consistent drain on county finances for many years and, amazingly, has a negative net asset balance of $2,152,246; a plan must and will be formulated in 2006 as to how to proceed.

This is only a brief summary of the extensive problems brought out by the audit. The full report is available and I encourage all citizens to review it.

The 2005 budget as prepared by the prior BOC contained many of these same problems. Specifically, we had over $900,000 in un-budgeted or under-budgeted items.

This figure includes nearly $600,000 in various expenses related to capping/closing the landfill, an expenditure that the BOC had known about for several years and which certainly should have been budgeted in 2005. An additional $314,000 was needed for mandated items such as indigent legal defense, construction of the long promised but unbuilt animal shelter, code enforcement and so on.

The present BOC was able to obtain a very low-interest loan (four percent) from the state for the landfill. We applied for a USDA grant for the animal shelter. The new BOC was also forced to make extensive cuts in program to balance the budget.

The majority of the cuts came internally from Public Works ($184,000), rather than from external programs (such as the library, Family Connection, the Health Department, the hospital) not directly controlled by the BOC.
As you might imagine, this budget balancing is not pleasant for any elected official, but the alternative was to spend money that we did not have, as was done in 2004.

For 2006, finances remain an important issue. Once again, due to inaccurate budgeting and overspending by our predecessors, old bills were left unpaid and are now coming due, specifically for the Courthouse renovation SPLOST that stopped receiving tax funds in 2005.

Unfortunately, the taxpayers will have to come up with about $450,000 in 2006 to pay off the prior (i.e. remaining) bonds for the Courthouse. The BOC has, therefore, again been forced to make reductions in a number of services to balance the budget and avoid tax increases. This time, there was a 20 percent across the board reduction in the grants that we make to the outside groups referenced above. The budget is now balanced and we are finally out of the woods financially.

The buck stops here; regardless of when the mistakes were made, we must and will take action to correct the problems, as promised in our campaign for election. Yes, it is painful for all of us, but given the financial state of affairs of the county, we were given no choice.
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Efficiency/Reorganization
There has been continuing problems regarding service delivery by both county employees and contractors, such as Advanced Disposal Service (ADS). These performance problems have been on-going for many years and cannot be resolved overnight. But, we are making substantial progress.

The recently hired County Manager, Greg Williams, formerly in that position with Rockdale County, is proving to be invaluable in our reorganization efforts. Greg recommended that we commission a long overdue wage and salary study so that we can hire and compensate people at appropriate and objective salary levels.

Previously, things had been left to chance and politics, resulting in wage inequities and poor morale. This study is the first step in getting a competent and motivated workforce. The BOC also sent a recommendation to our state legislators that legislation be enacted to bring BOC compensation in line with surrounding counties. BOC compensation has not increased in 20 years.

We have employed a CPA with government experience as our new CFO and a master’s level planner to oversee our Planning and Zoning Office. We also hired a new outside auditor to help us determine our financial status as stated above and have retained an experienced County Attorney. One of the new attorney’s top priorities is to re-negotiate our contract with ADS for curbside pick-up.

Unfortunately, we inherited an unbreakable contract that runs through 2008 and contains no performance goals or penalties. Further, for some unknown reason, the city of Monticello was never asked to sign that contract and is, therefore, not bound by it.

In summary, please note that for the past four years net county taxes went up at about 10 percent per year. The new BOC vowed to change this trend and we have: taxes for this next year are only up 1.7%.

Change is inevitable, but, working together as one community rather than as emotional partisan groups, we can succeed. In this vein, I would like to sincerely thank all those citizens of good will throughout all areas of the county who have served on various committees and given their time, talents and input in such a selfless manner.