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The Claiborne County Commission approved the Fiscal Year 2025-26 budget appropriations and tax levy at their regular meeting on Monday, May 19. The budget includes a 3-percent raise for all county employees and keeps the property tax rate at $2.34 per $100 of assessed value.

Both measures were approved by a vote of 20-1 with Commissioner Whitt Shuford voting no. His main reason for opposing it seemed to be that he would rather see a long-term budget plan covering a five, eight or ten year period instead of going through the process each year.

A third resolution was approved unanimously that sets the budget appropriations for charitable organizations in the county at $83,750. The only change from last year’s budget was to include $2,000 for the Senior Citizens Home Assistance Service, $1,500 for Brave Boxing and Fitness, and $1,000 for travel for Claiborne Schools athletic teams.

County Finance Director Eric Pearson spoke about all three resolutions before they were voted on.

“The total budget across all the funds is $104,393,000. The (budget appropriations resolution) goes through each of the major functions and sets the appropriation authority,” he said. “There’s language in there for various things involving budget amendments, the distribution of investment earnings and the distribution of sales tax.”

It also sets the commissioners’ pay at $350 per meeting and $175 per committee meeting.

“This budget, if you adopt it, it does maintain services for residents and businesses, it funds all your mandatory services including mandatory cost increases and required debt service payments,” Pearson said. “We do meet the state mandated maintenance of effort requirements. It does fund, in addition to that, a lot of discretionary services that you’ve chosen to provide to the community— juvenile services, fire prevention, animal control, senior citizens, library, soll conservation, veterans services.”

Pearson said that while there was no property tax rate increase in the budget, the projected property tax revenue totals about $15,797,000, which is an increase of $287,000 from last year.

“That’s a 1.86-percent increase so that’s far below the rate of inflation, which is about 3.5-percent,” he said.

“Overall it’s a financially responsible budget. We’re not using inflated revenue or understated costs or unsustainable fund balance withdrawals to balance the budget. It provides county funds with sufficient cash balances for cash flow management,” Pearson added. “I think this will be helpful to maintain the county’s healthy financial positions so I recommend that you adopt it.”

In a related matter earlier in the meeting, the commission voted 16-5 in favor of a resolution adopting fund balance guidelines. This had been recommended by the Financial Management Committee and suggests keeping a fund balance of between 17 and 20 percent in the General Fund, between 15 and 20 percent in the Highway Fund, 25 to 20 percent in the Sanitation Fund, and 50 percent in the Debt Service Fund.

Commissioners Dennis Cook, Rosemary Barnett, Carolyn Brooks, Steve Mason, and Quinton Rogers voted no.

“I’m glad to see that we passed the fund balance guidelines earlier in this meeting, that’s a step forward,” Shuford said before the vote on the budget. “I had asked the Budget Committee to look at a long-term plan. I don’t know that it happened, can anybody attest to that one way or another?”

Budget Committee Chairman Mitchell Cosby said a long-term plan was not considered because “there are so many things that are unknown year to year. We’d be glad to do that, though.”

Commissioner Stacey Crawford asked what the projected General Fund balance was and Pearson said it would be around $4 million.

Crawford asked why the commission had to raise taxes four cents last year just to break even and this year there was such a balance left over.

Pearson said it was because in fiscal 2024 the commission adopted a balanced budget.

“Historically, you have taken at least $1 million out of the general fund to keep the tax rate flat. When you did that in fiscal year 2023, you also set the tax rate way too low and went with a certified rate that was artificially low and you didn’t increase it to what was actually needed,” he said. “The 2024 budget was the first budget I worked on and I gave you all the good news about the poor financial shape we were in. The first step of correcting that was getting a tax rate that actually funded your costs without doing a fund balance withdrawal. When you do that and you have a very good fiscal year — you have unspent appropriations that all goes to the fund balance, we had surplus revenue, that all went to the fund balance. So you had a big improvement in your fund balance because you budgeted correctly and appropriately, that’s the bottom line why it happened.”

He went on to explain that the property assessments in the county work on a five-year cycle and next year those valuations are likely to go up so the tax rate will likely go down while still bringing in more revenue. He stressed that the key was to make sure the rate was high enough to maintain those established fund balances.

“The budget committee did a really good job. They had a goal they were trying to reach to not raise the tax rate,” Pearson said.

Commission Chairman Mike Campbell also thanked the budget committee for their work on this year’s budget, the commissioners who attended the budget workshop and Pearson for seeing the process through.

In other business, the commission approved:

• a budget amendment for the Highway Department that moves $90,000 from the stone and contracting part of their budget to be used for asphalt for patching roads across the county;
• authorizing County Mayor Joe Brooks to submit paperwork for a $50,000 grant for the Senior Citizens Centers through the ETHRA and the East Tennessee Agency on Aging and Disability. There is a $5,000 match the county will provide and $25,000 will be used for renovations at both the Tazewell and Harrogate senior citizens center.
• a budget amendment to reflect a $69,000 Cyber Security grant from the Department of Homeland Security for various cyber security improvements including awareness training, risk assessment, penetration testing and remediation efforts. The county’s match for this grant is $1,112.
• the Sheriff’s contract with Axon Enterprises for body cameras.The five-year contract includes storage and access to camera video and replacement of the cameras at a total cost of $271,065.70.
• a budget amendment for the Claiborne County Jail to reflect a grant for the fiscal year 2026 Evidence Based Programming project to reduce recidivism. The $496,000 grant will fund adding four offices and a meeting area to an unused space inside the jail and funds two social worker positions at no cost to the county. Commissioner TIm Shrout, who is also the jail administrator, praised the grant and recognized Director of Evidence Based Programs Brooklyn Delph and Case Manager Baleigh Bolden “for the phenomenal job they do at the facility. They do a great job with rehabilitative services for the inmates and I’m proud to have them.”
• a budget amendment for the Family Justice Center to reflect a $100 donation they had received.