JOHN COFFELTEditor

After weeks of deliberation and delay, the Coffee County Commission approved a $26.9 million county budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year with a deficit of $1.5 million

“I’m confident that we are doing the right thing passing this budget tonight,” Commissioner Dennis Hunt said during the meeting.

Hunt said that despite concerns over the deficit, attributing to the county’s history of overcoming projected deficits, he felt that this was a good budget.

The final vote, occurred during the regular Commission meeting July 11 with 10 commissioners voting in favor of the budget and six in opposition. Commissioners Jimmy Hollandsworth, Claude Morse, Joey Hobbs, Rose Smith, Tim Brown and Terry Hershman voted no, while Commissioners Tim Morris and Dwight Miller were absent.

The vote came after an amendment left in play from the June meeting failed and a second “housekeeping” amendment to add additional budget cuts made during a Monday work session amounting to an additional $581,759 reduction from the proposed deficit.

Those cuts, plus those from the July 5 Budget and Finance Committee meeting slashed the original proposed deficit from $2.2 million down to $1.5 million, while retaining a 4% raise for employees and serval employee salary adjustments intended to bump several department heads’ salaries up to competitive wages.

Those increases were a sore spot for some in the county. Before the matter was postponed by popular vote during the June Commission meeting, Commissioner Claude Morse made a sweeping but ultimately

failing motion to cut out all salary adjustments, excluding an employment retention salary adjustment for the Director of Budgets and Rural Solid Wastes convenience center workers.

Concerns were raised by Coffee County Trustee John Marchesoni and Register of Deeds Donna Toney regarding the salary adjustments that were in the budget that included the directors of maintenance, codes and the mayor’s chief of staff that constituted pay increases over the 4% across the board.

County Mayor Judd Matheny defended those additions at the June Commission meeting as being needed to retain those employees and promised that it was a start in the process of making all the employees whole.

Matheny noted that the county is not a socialist state and not everyone will necessarily be given identical salary adjustments.

Lynn Sebourn, chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee, said the salary increases were applied with the intention of bringing up those who were behind without locking those being underpaid into that deficit.

“I want you to consider that if we do that (apply all pay increases universally), any one that’s currently being underpaid is being locked in forever. I don’t think that’s a tenable position, regardless,” Sebourn said.

For the most part, the final budget cuts came as incremental cuts from across the budget, including the Sheriff Department’s uniform allotment, some training money and overtime pay. Additional cuts were made to other agency contributions, including the Coffee County Humane Society, the Tullahoma Fine Arts Center and two regional tourism organizations.

The commission unanimously approved a resolution that set the tax levy in Coffee County to the same as it was for the 2023 fiscal year. The total uniform tax rate is $2.0558 on each $100 of taxable property countywide, plus $0.052 for Manchester residents or $0.2232 on rural residents. Coffee County Industrial Park residents are charged an additional $0.2187 on each $100 of taxable property.

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.