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Murphy – Cherokee County’s fiscal year 2022-23 budget could cause a fair amount of sticker shock to local taxpayers.
Revenues and expenditures for all funds total $53,235,945, an all-time high for the county. The budget features a property tax millage rate of 60 cents, which is up 20 percent – 10 cents total – over the current rate.
“The board absolutely will reduce that millage rate,” County Manager Randy Wiggins said. “We’ve shown them ways that we believe, and we’re going to give them some other ways that we feel do some things to reduce that as well.
“A big portion of that 10 cents is really to address things that the board adopted last year, things they added to the budget last year but did not set millage rate to cover. About 8.1 cents was things that occurred during the year.”
Wiggins said there was about a 3.2-cent deficit when the board adopted last year’s budget, leading to use of fund balance to cover some of that cost. The board later adopted a three percent cost of living adjustment in August after the budget was adopted, which equates to about 1.3 cents, he added. The 2022-23 budget adds another 3 percent cost of living adjustment due to inflation.
Commissioner Cal Stiles said he was particularly concerned about the numbers in light of a potential looming settlement over lawsuits against the county and Department of Social Services.
“From the overall picture, our citizens can’t afford a 10-cent tax increase,” Stiles said. “Because we are, hopefully, at some point going to have a settlement on these lawsuits, and at that point there will be an increase in the tax rate in order to resolve that and pay that.
“What we’ve go to do, especially this coming Thursday night (at a budget work session), is sit down and get the pencil out, and we’ve got to cut this 10-cent request. I’d like to see it go completely away, but I don’t know if it can or not because last year I mentioned we were spending money that we didn’t have, fund balance dollars last year to balance the budget.”
Other contributing factors within the 2022-23 budget include a decrease in EMS revenue of 1.2 cents and the Cherokee County Detention Center saw its own decrease of 1.2 cents because COVID-19 restrictions limit the number of federal inmates the facility can house. Wiggins said the budget also calculates a fuel increase of up to $7 per gallon, which carries a 1.6-cent impact.
“That may be too high,” Wiggins said of the fuel estimate. “The board may be able to back off of that some. But based on everything we saw, $7 per gallon could be a real possibility.”
The recommended budget includes an increase in budgeted sales tax proceeds of seven percent, or about $700,000 over the fiscal year 2022 approved budget.
Seventy-one percent of the general fund expenditures are allocated to public safety (30 percent), human services (25) and education (16).
“We’ve got certain things that are needs we have to provide, but that’s where we’ve got to decide not what we want, but what do we have to have,” Stiles said.