Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Certified officers with the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department and county employees will see pay raises as approved by the County Commission on June 24.

The raises were included in the county budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year starting on July 1 that was approved at the meeting.

Certified officers will receive raises to make their pay equal to that of Manchester City Police officers. County department heads will receive 5% to distribute to employees at their discretion. This follows the 8.5% that they received last year for raises.

$750,000 in funds from the County’s Debt Services line-item will be moved to the general fund to offset some of the cost of the raises.

As of June 30, 2025, the county’s estimated fund balance is $11,363,058. The total revenues for 2026 are estimated to be $29,006,860 and total expenditures are expected to be $31,117,288.

Those projections create a fund balance deficit of $1,500,428 for the coming fiscal year leaving the fund balance on June 30, 2026 at an estimated $9,862,630.

The budget passed with a vote of 10-6. Commissioners Joseph Hodge, Roger Chambers, Dowe Jones, Jimmy Hollandsworth, Benton Brown and Dwight Miller cast the no votes. Newly sworn-in Commissioner Todd Malone abstained from all votes at the meeting.

Miller stated before the vote that, while he supports the pay raises, there were things in the budget he did not support and could not vote for.

Chambers, who serves on the Budget and Finance Committee that approved the budget to send to the full commission, commented after the meeting that his reasoning for voting was solely the amount of the deficit.

“It was a budget, I believe, that was headed in the right direction,” he explained. “I just felt like we needed to spend a little more time on it. I know we ran out of calendar time, but there was nothing wrong with spending a few more meetings on trying to reduce that number.”

After the meeting, Commissioner Dowe Jones reiterated that her vote was against the deficit and not the pay raises.

Coffee County Mayor Dennis Hunt explained during the meeting that the Commission approved a budget with a deficit of $2 million last year that has since been decreased to $573,000 and could be lower by July 31.

“We’re doing it way better than we thought we would,” said Hunt.

He also noted that this year’s projected deficit was “considerably” less than the one approved last year.

A trio of budget amendments from the Coffee County School system were also voted on by the Commission.

The first amendment brought up for a vote was to pay salary benefits to the new Director of Schools, Scott Hargrove, for the month of June.

Commissioner Miller asked School Budget Manager April Melson how many directors were being paid with the budget amendment to which she replied “three.”

The amendment failed 9-7 with Commissioners Hollandsworth, Benton Brown, Chambers, Rose Ann Smith, Terry Hershman, Miller and Frank Watkins voting no.

The other two amendments were cleanup items that passed unanimously 16-0.

None of the three amendments affected fund balance and were all approved by Budget and Finance to be brought to the full Commission.