No Time For Vacation In Paper Business
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The Yalobusha County Board of Supervisors hammered out details for the coming fiscal year’s budget during a seven hour meeting Monday at the Water Valley courthouse. The budgeted expenses include raises for county employees without raising taxes.
DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell
The old saying about time passing fast sure rings true for me, the last week has been a whirlwind. I got the newspapers delivered to the stores last Wednesday morning and worked on a few loose ends before heading home to pack for a trip to Orange Beach with my wife and her brother and sister-in-law.
Beach trips are higher on my wife’s list than mine, but I usually enjoy spending time in the ocean. There is something about the salty water, the sound of waves crashing into the beach that is relaxing. I like to get deep enough to keep from getting sun-burned, bobbing in the water with only my head sticking out.
Admittedly I share old Gus’ sentiment about keeping my limbs intact, and I was a little leery at first about a wayward shark making a meal out of one of my legs. I don’t foresee the need to kick a pig, but Gus had a point in Lonesome Dove, my favorite movie, when the doctor wanted to take off his leg after gangrene set in. Thankfully there were no arrows or sharks, and we enjoyed two good days, some of us on the beach and others in the ocean.
We got home Sunday afternoon and my father-in-law was ailing, he has been battling shingles for several weeks. He is 92 years-old and the pain from the shingles has left him weak and he was hallucinating. That was alarming, especially when he started seeing lizards on the wall.
We soon discovered that a urinary tract infection and the high-powered meds to help relieve the pain from the shingles were the culprits.
I finally got home late Sunday and was back at it early Monday, knowing the printing deadline was fast approaching. Monday also marked a budget meeting for the Board of Supervisors, and it was a long one. They met for over seven hours, going line by line through each department’s budget before a final vote came at the end of the day.
The budget meeting is an important step in setting the tax rate for the upcoming fiscal year that begins October 1. The details of the county budget are more complicated than you would think, but it boils down to determining how much revenue is projected for the coming year and balancing the expenditures accordingly. It is tough balancing act, as the county’s tax base has not grown enough to provide additional revenue to keep up with inflation.
I think we have all shared our two-cents about wasteful spending in many government agencies but I will honestly say that our county officials operate a lean budget. By the end of Monday, the balance had been struck and the tax rate will remain the same in the coming year while giving county employees a hefty raise. But it took time to get there as supervisors agonized over just about every request for budget increases presented by department heads.
At times it was the little things that bogged the meeting down such as a request from the EMA directors to double to dive team budget from $1,000 to $2,000 annually. The team has around six certified divers, all volunteers who earned their certification on their own dime.
The problem is the dive equipment is old, and not safe to use. Every person attending the meeting conceded that a dive team is important when you need to recover a body, but thankfully you don’t need them often. The consensus was to purchase new equipment to outfit one diver with a one-time budget allocation instead of a recurring budget addition in the coming years.
The budget meeting is an important step in setting the tax rate for the upcoming fiscal year that begins October 1. A public meeting will be scheduled in September, allowing input on the decisions made during Monday’s meeting before it is adopted.
If you have an opinion about how your tax dollars are spent, this will be your opportunity. A notice about the meeting time will be published in the Herald in the coming weeks. Speaking from experience, typically there is little input from the public in these hearings.
