County Commission Takes First Look at FY 17 Budget Proposals

Stephens County Administrator Phyllis Ayers said Wednesday she is working to incorporate commissioners’ comments from a budget meeting last week into a proposed Fiscal Year 2017 budget.

The Stephens County Commission met last Thursday and Friday for a Fiscal Year 2017 budget meeting.

Ayers said that the two days of meetings went very well.

She said she presented some different proposals and departmental requests and then got feedback from commissioners.

According to Ayers, one of the topics was whether to leave the millage rate at a projected 13.41 mills or try to lower it.

Ayers said no decision has been made yet on that topic.

“I think they will do everything possible that they can to reduce the rate, but they are always facing needs that are passed down to us,” said Ayers.

She said in particular, a couple of things are proving challenging while working to put the Fiscal Year 2017 budget together.

“It is very, very hard to budget for Title Ad Valorem Tax revenue and another big thing we are facing is the federal Department of Labor ruling that is coming down for professional, salaried, administrative executive positions that starts December 1 and we have absolutely no way to get around it, so we are combing through the employees right now and identifying how that will affect us financially,” said Ayers.

One thing Ayers said that the county is looking at is providing pay increases of some sort for employees.

She said she has put a proposal forth that the commission is looking at.

“I do not think this would necessarily be called a COLA, but a three-layer grid to help those that are on the bottom scale, so a certain dollar value an hour would be a higher percent increase and then a middle range dollar hour and then your top paid people, dollar per hour, would be the smallest amount increase,” said Ayers. “That is basically taking whatever a flat increase would be and moving most of those down to the lower ranges we have in the government.”

Ayers said it would help those employees shoulder a 13.83 percent health insurance premium increase that was just announced.

She also said that it would help in an effort to keep employees from leaving county government.

“The board is always in a really tough position because they have constituents out there that need the millage rate kept down, lower the millage rate the most that you can so they are fighting that battle, but they are also fighting a battle that they have to keep a government running and it does skilled workers that we want to try to keep here if we can because we put training dollars in them and then they will go somewhere else making more money,” said Ayers.

Ayers said that a copy of the proposed Fiscal Year 2017 county budget will be available for review by the public starting on June 6 in the office of the County Clerk in the historic Stephens County Courthouse during normal business hours.

Public hearings on the Fiscal Year 2017 budget for Stephens County will take place on June 14 at 8:30 a.m. and June 28 at 5:30 p.m. Both public hearings will take place in the second-floor courtroom of the historic Stephens County Courthouse on Tugalo Street in downtown Toccoa.