The Newton County Board of Commissioners (BOC) came to a consensus on balancing the 2017 fiscal year budget Thursday night.
The BOC will do so by charging a $50 fee for use of the county’s convenience centers through January, at which point the centers will close. In the six months of the fiscal year leading up to the closure of the 11 centers, the hours of operation and number of centers open will decrease.
The plan, dubbed the Sims plan by District 1 Commissioner John Douglas, will help fund a $2.1 million shortfall in the budget — if all county departments meet fiscal year 2016 numbers — and buy time until more information can be garnered concerning solid waste. The BOC submitted a request for qualification/proposals (RFQ/P) in order to learn from qualified applicants the best way to run the county’s solid waste stream. Six RFQ/Ps have since come in and the SWA will review them soon.
“With that being said I’m looking at a date of January 1 … we’ll be shutting down the [convenience] centers,” said District 2 Commissioner Lanier Sims. “If an outside company, or one of the proposals had the magic bullet, had the answer, then they would have to bill the citizens directly, because at that point we can’t do anything.”
Sims was referring to the fact that the county would not be able to tax the citizens after it approves the 2017 budget without raising the millage rate — something most commissioners wanted to avoid Tuesday night. With that in mind, the BOC discussed several options for balancing the budget, including reducing appropriations and closing the convenience centers.
Toward the end of the work session, Sims put his plan on the table, laying out the math. He proposed reducing the current deficit of $1,994,360 by $755,000 by closing the convenience centers for six months at the end of the fiscal year. Prior to that, Sims proposed saving $129,744 by reducing hours to bring the deficit down to $1,089,000. From there, he told the board, the rest of the money would be raised by a fee of $50 to an anticipated 20,000 users between now and January 1. He also suggested suspending all capital expenditures, excepting emergencies, for the first six months of the fiscal year.
Sims had one concern, he said, which was the county’s inability to collect a fee for the convenience centers. Last year, the BOC proposed a fee for the centers, which was expected to bring in $1 million of revenue. That fee never materialized.
“I think the plan just put out is close to what we need to do, frankly,” Douglas said after the board learned of Sims plan. “In a nutshell, I think Commissioner Sims has about got it, and I would support his plan.”
The BOC said it could not be certain on the amount of people who would participate in using the convenience centers for a fee, but acknowledged that any additional curbside pickup that may occur would lead to increased revenues in the county landfill’s tipping fee collection.
The BOC directed County Manager Lloyd Kerr and his staff to find a way to charge for the centers, whether it was through a decal placed on cars or the fee being paid at the centers themselves.
The plan to charge a fee for six months, reduce the hours and then close the centers in January — with information from RFQ/Ps coming — was agreed to by consensus, with District 4 Commissioner J.C. Henderson disagreeing with the plan.
The county will hold three public hearings on the proposed fiscal year 2017 budget before voting it into the record at a public meeting. The dates of the meetings are yet to be set.
For more on this story see Sunday's print edition of The Covington News.
