John Coffelt, Editor

The Coffee County Budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year is still a work in progress.

Yet with less than a month left before the year starts on July 1, the Coffee County Budget and Finance Committee ended its June 5 meeting approving tentative additions that include cuts to nonprofit donations and to Coffee County Schools.

With commissioners searching for additional cuts, the preliminary budget that will go before the full commission on June 10 with a roughly $3 million deficit includes a multilayered system of 7% raises for employees. A delayed payment on the raises was also floated to lessen the impact until a better picture of revenue can be determined.

“I don’t want to carry $3 million to the floor,” Budget and Finance Chairman Tim Morris said. “I can’t see going to the floor with anything higher than that $2.85 million deficit.”

County Mayor Dennis Hunt suggested fiscal responsibility.

“Tullahoma is already talking about a property tax increase. I don’t want us to do that,” he said.

This year’s budget began with $11.93 in reserves, and will close out with an estimated $900,000 less than that with roughly $10,983,916 in the fund balance.

Before the employee raises and nonprofit contributions are added, the estimated total revenue for the county in 2026 is $26,048,946, while the expenditures are set at $30,135,165, a difference of $2.8 million.

Budget and Finance members initially passed a motion that would recommend 7% raises for employees with a limit to department heads at 7% and a lump sum of 7% per department to be distributed to employees at the directors’ discretion.

The cap on the directors’ increases ensures an even distribution between employees and directors.

To find funding for the raises, the committee pulled an over-and-above $671,000 contribution of TVA In Lieu Of Tax payment money that is customarily passed on to Coffee County Schools. The schools’ budget was approved earlier by Budget and Finance with a 4% raise for all employees.

The committee was presented with cost of three options for raises 3%, 5% and 7%.  The 5% would add $759,077 and a 7% increase adds $1.76 million to the budget. 

Adding in the requested donations from county nonprofits would bump the budget $810,858. The committee resolved to keep funding all the volunteer fire departments (at approximately $500,000), the Coffee County Rescue Squad ($80,000) and Coffee County Senior Citizens Center ($94,000), for a total of roughly $700,000.   

To offset that, Sheriff Chad Partin proposed pulling the extra money in his budget that goes to fund SROs and to end the county’s Enterprise patrol car lease program.  A state program for the time being also funds SROs creating some excess in the deputy pay line.     

This year’s budget is estimated to come in slightly over $952,000 short, significantly less than the $2.3 million shortfall that was approved. 

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.