OUR COUNTY
D. Gary Davis

County Mayor

There has been some confusion recently about the roles and responsibilities of the County Commission and the School Board. I want to try and clear up the confusion and give you a better idea about the responsibility of each elected board.

The primary responsibility of the County Commission is the appropriation of funds and the authority to levy property taxes. The commission has limited authority in the day to day business of the county because county departments are headed by other elected officials.

The School Board’s responsibility is the education of our children. School Board members serve as advocates for the school system and their sole responsibility is education.

The Bradley County Commission has no authority over the Bradley County Schools in the day to day management issues. The County Commission’s only authority over the School Board is to either approve or disapprove the annual budget. If the budget is disapproved by the County Commission, the Commission can send it back to the School Board with a specified amount of total funding, but the Commission has no authority to make changes to specific budget line items.

I would also like to correct some misinformation that is often given concerning school funding. A parent brought to my attention a memo that said, “your tax dollars are only used for salaries and building projects, not school operations”. I encourage you to look at the County’s budget, pages 121-133. If you look at line items 410, 429, 432, 449, 722 and 725 you will see where funds are appropriated for school operations. These lines alone total over 2 million dollars and are funded with tax dollars.

The County Commission has the difficult job of looking at the county as a whole and balancing the needs of the various departments with the limited dollars. There are many important services that the county provides such as ambulance service, law enforcement, fire department and roads in addition to schools.

Each fall, the County Commission has a retreat and at this time they set priorities for the upcoming budget year. This gives the Commission guidance when making tough budget decisions. Last fall the top priorities were education and roads. The 2006-2007 budget allocated schools a one million dollar increase in local funding resulting in a four million dollar increase overall. The Road Department was also a priority with an increase of almost one million dollars.

During the budget process in the spring I proposed a plan to begin an Education Capital Improvement Fund for the Schools and a similar capital fund for the Road Department. Unfortunately, the County Commission Finance Committee removed the Education Capital Improvement Fund from the budget because of a request from school officials.

Without the Education Capital Improvement Fund, if the County Commission approves funding for a new school (three have been informally requested by the school board in the next 5 years), a tax increase next year will be necessary to fund the new school construction. Since these are additional schools, another tax increase would be necessary for the additional operational costs.

The County Commission Fall Retreat was this past Saturday. We will discuss over the next few weeks the priorities commissioners set for the 2007-2008 budget year. Feel free to call me (728.7141) or email me (gdavis@bradleyco.net) if you have input or questions about any issue concerning county government.