County budget hearing called
County certified property values total $1.8 billion
BY GLORIA JENNINGS

Cherokee County Commissioners will conduct a public hearing and adopt the county 2007-08 budget and tax rate at a meeting at 10 a.m. Aug. 27 in the county courtroom.

The commissioners court met at 2 p.m. Aug. 16 to approve tax data presented by Linda Beard, tax assessor collector.

The proposed tax rate is 61 cents per hundred dollar valuation. This compares to a 62 cent tax rate used for last year's budget.

The proposed tax rate includes a decrease of one cent in the general fund rate. That rate was decreased from 42.7 cents to 41.7 cents. The remainder of the rate remains the same as last year with 1.35 cents going to indigent health care; 3.45 cents to contractual obligations and 14.5 cents to lateral road fund.

The effective county tax rate is 58.92 cents. The effective tax rate would have raised the same amount of money as the 62 cent rate did last year.

Rollback rate is 72.3554 cents but has been reduced to 64.2427 per $100 valuation after 8.1127 cents for the county's half-cent sales tax revenue was deducted.

Total certified Cherokee County general fund property values totaled $1,808,490,604. Of that amount homestead property with tax ceilings for persons 65 years of age or handicapped totaled $40,600,000. Rolling stock property totals $1,808,490,604. The lateral road fund totaled $1,796,475,809 with the over 65 frozen homestead exemptions dropping to $33,875,000.

The new budget is expected to be in the neighbor- hood of $18 million. Last year's budget was in excess of $16 million.

The 2007-08 budget will include a 10 percent pay hike for county employees and officials; an extra $100,000 was added to each of the four county precinct budgets to help with the increase in road oil materials.

Commissioners approved discounts of three percent if taxes are paid in October; two percent if paid in November and one percent if paid in December.

Tax collections are expected to be 100 percent and there was no excess debt collections and 100 percent of the taxes were collected in 2006-07.

Attending the Thursday afternoon meeting were County Judge Chris Davis; Commissioners Mary Gregg, Kevin Pierce, Moody Glass III and Byron Underwood; County Clerk Laverne Lusk; and County Auditor L.H. Crockett.

Commissioners regularly meet on the second and fourth Mondays of the month. The next meeting will be Aug. 27.

Next month's meetings will be on Sept. 10 and Sept. 24. Agendas are posted three days prior to the meetings on the courthouse door.