As the Bulloch County government staff guides the elected commissioners through this year’s budget making process with a goal of having no property tax increase and at least a “statutory rollback,” department heads almost certainly will not get all the added personnel they have requested.

Nor, as the county officials look to a special purpose local options sales tax, or SPLOST, extension proposal, probably for a March 2025 referendum, can it possibly fund all of the building projects that have been identified. So, the main themes that emerged from the Board of Commissioners midday March 28 budget work session were similar for the short-term and long-term. It was a follow-up to the “retreat” the commissioners held March 11 and 12 in the field house at Paulson Stadium to hear presentations and requests – without dollar figures assigned yet – from department and agency chiefs.

Thursday’s follow-up session was held in the commissioners’ usual meeting room on North Main Street but with tables arranged conference-style and a sandwich lunch provided for the commissioners and staff. County Manager Tom Couch, Assistant County Manager Cindy Steinmann, Chief Financial Officer Kristie King and Human Resources Director Cindy Mallett led the discussion.

“We have had more requests than we have money, so we have some decisions to make,” King said early on.

She noted that most of the added annual spending priorities identified by the department and agency leaders during the two-day retreat had been for additional employees. This was also true of the requests received during a similar strategic budgeting retreat one year earlier, and was mostly in the same category:  public safety.

“That is where a lot of the cost is in the requests this year, as it was last year,” King said. “So we’ve had a bunch of employees requested again, and again it’s in public safety departments. That is where the needs have been, and that’s where they continue to be.”

Priorities worksheet

A worksheet that Steinmann handed out to the six district commissioners and Chairman Roy Thompson near the end of Thursday’s session listed the numbers and types of additional personnel requested by the departments.

These add up to 48 full-time positions, one part-time position and requests to “regrade” four existing positions to higher levels of skill or supervision. The sheet listed what King called “very, extremely rough estimates” of the payroll and benefits for these jobs. They totaled $3,692,000, including $2.05 million from the  general fund and $1.642 million from the rural fire fund, which is also  property tax-supported but has a separate millage rate.

The county’s current, fiscal year 2024 general fund budget totals $61 million. Current discussions are aimed mainly at the budget for fiscal year 2025, which opens July 1, 2024. County commission staff members said they hope to receive information on the property tax digest from the Board of Tax Assessors office soon so that King can have a tentative budget ready for the commissioners by May 1.

Last year the county added 34 new employee positions in the fiscal 2024 budget. But to fund that, an 8% across-the-board employee raise and other budgeted spending, the commissioners approved a 1.5-mill hike in the millage rate. When compounded with the previous year’s inflation in property appraisals, that amounted to an average 28% average increase in tax, before exemptions. Some citizens have complained about it at county meetings ever since, and now, Thompson and the three other commissioners up for election this year all have challengers.

For fiscal year 2025, new general-fund positions requested by departments include 11 for the Emergency Medical  Service; six jail employees plus one patrol deputy, one crime scene investigator and three school resource officers for the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office; three Public Works employees, including a solid waste superintendent and two equipment operators;  one Recreation and Parks employee for the Agricultural Complex and one  full-time and one part-time staff member for courts and judges’ offices.

The 21 new fire fund positions suggested for the Bulloch County Fire Department include three to have someone in charge of each shift, nine firefighters to have a third at each station for each shift, and another nine firefighters to “improve service delivery by staffing a fourth station around the clock,” according to the worksheet descriptions.

With the worksheet, the staff asked the commissioners to rate each of the 15 categorized requests for additional employees with an “H” for high priority, an “M” for medium priority or an “L” for low priority.

At the top of the same page, the commissioners were asked to rate to possibilities for employee raises the same way.

Still some vacancies

Even after last year’s 8% raise and the shift to a “guaranteed benefit” pension plan, some departments still face challenges keeping enough employees, with turnover resulting from competition with other employers, according to the key county staff members and commissioners.

One week before Thursday’s work session, the county government had 28 vacancies, for a 5.5% overall vacancy rate throughout its 500-person workforce, Mallett reported.

“Of those, 13 have been vacated in the last 90 days, so that means the remainder of them have been open for longer than that, and that sort of speaks to the difficulty in filling some of those more specialized jobs, like in public works, some in recreation …,” Mallett said.

Some of the county’s jobs are still “behind the market” in pay more than others, she said.                                                                                                                                          

Growth spurred by the regional Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant, still under construction in Bryan County, and some suppliers locating in Bulloch contributes to the perceived needs for more public safety employees and improved county facilities. But with the ramp-up to full job creation expected to take five years or more, the growth will more slowly add to the county’s tax base, Couch predicts.

He told the commissioners that after they see  this year’s tax digest figures, they may face a choice whether to fund added positions or instead do something more to improve employee pay.

“We’ll probably have growth, and some inflation, in the digest for sure, which means you’ll definitely want to do a statutory rollback on taxes,” Couch  said. “But when we get to that level, I think that’s  where the line in the sand is drawn, you know, how many additional employees can actually be hired.”

By “statutory rollback,” he means a rollback sufficient to offset any inflation in assessed property values and avoid having to announce a tax increase under the provisions of Georgia law known as the Property Taxpayer’s Bill Rights.

“When we conclude with our revenue estimates we’re going to be able to give you a better baseline, and that could come down very well to a choice of either how many additional employees if any at all, or do you want to reinvest in employee compensation,” Couch told the commissioners.

Commissioner Toby Conner said he wants to prioritize necessary services.

“We’ve got to take care of what we’ve got to have,”  Conner  said. “Some of the other department heads are going to get mad at us, but we’ve got to have Public Works, we’ve got to have fire, we’ve got to have EMS,  we’ve got to have the Sheriff’s Office. That’s just the cold, hard facts.”

SPLOST projects

Toward the longer-range planning for capital spending, the commissioners have contracted two different consulting firms to draft a “master facilities plan” for county buildings and grounds and a “workforce study,” to predict the county government’s own workforce needs. Both are slated to be completed around November, Couch said, and will be used in the SPLOST planning, the idea being that knowing the number of future employees will help predict needs for workspace. County Attorney Jeff Akins told the commissioners that March 2025 will be the latest opportunity to hold a referendum to extend the sales tax without a lapse before the current SPLOST expires the following October.

As previously reported, Couch during the March 11-12 retreat called four building projects – a jail expansion, a new judicial complex, an indoor recreation center and a stand-alone elections headquarters – “inevitable.” These a part of a much longer list of county facility needs, which Steinmann reviewed Thursday.

But Couch again predicted that just two of the projects, the jail expansion and judicial complex, could use up all of the $108 million to $115 million expected from a six-year SPLOST extension.