Several good things happened this
month at the Blount County Commission.
The resolution to force the Mayor
to spend $100,000 to hire a Human Resources Director
was finally defeated. You will recall that the Mayor
combined this position with another to save money.
This did not please Commissioner Gary Farmer, Sheriff
Berrong and the other employee members of the Human
Resources Committee. Over the last six months, they
have repeatedly introduced resolutions to force the
Mayor to hire an HR Director. These resolutions all
shared a common problem. They were illegal. Farmer and
Berrong did not seemed to care about the legal details
and tried one more time. Finally, the Commission had
enough. They amended the resolution to make it a
simple restatement of the original 1996 document that
created the HR position. This preserved all the
Mayor’s powers, allowed him to continue saving the
$100,000 per year, and took the issue off the table,
hopefully forever.
An excellent turn-out of citizens,
who spoke eloquently about the issue, led to the
defeat of the campground zoning resolution. The zoning
ordinance that would permit campgrounds to be
established, on as little as 5 acres, in residential
areas, was bought before the Commission for a public
hearing last April. A number of citizens raised
serious questions about the proposal. No minimum
buffer distances to adjoining residential properties
were specified. The proposed ordinance permits
residents to stay for as long as 270 days. The
ordinance did not spell out any objective limits on
noise or light pollution. The resolution permitted
camp sites to be tightly jammed together with no open
space requirements. Unfortunately, a virtually
identical campground resolution was again sent to the
Commission in November. After listening to many
citizens speak about the problems contained in the
resolution, all Commissioners voted against
it. This is
the first time I have ever seen the sponsors of a
resolution (Wright and Kirby) vote against their own
proposal. Citizens were not against camp
grounds. They objected to a poorly written resolution.
The County spends hundreds of thousands of dollars
each year on a Planning Department. The department
professionals are supposed to draft resolutions that
assure high quality development, as well as protection
of surrounding property owners. This is not what the
citizens and the Commission received in this case. I
called the resolution that was presented, “junk”, and
it was. Hopefully, we will see better efforts from our
Planning Department in the future.
A resolution giving South Blount
Utilities exclusive rights to provide sewer
services in the county was withdrawn. The recent
exposure of substantial waste of ratepayer money,
misuse of funds, as well as Board and management
deficiencies at South Blount, made it clear that this
is no time for the County to enter into such an
agreement.
The
Political Nonsense
Unfortunately, the political
nonsense continued in another area. A resolution to
put the Commission in charge of allocating office and
parking spaces in County properties was passed. Only
Commissioners Lewis, Samples and myself voted against
this nonsense. Mayors, including our current Mayor,
have successfully handled this function for more than
ten years. In a political cheap shot at the Mayor, the
Commission will now take over those responsibilities.
This means that time the Commission should be spending
on the very serious debt and budget problems, will
instead be spent on deciding who gets what parking
spaces.
The
Real Challenge Facing the County - The Debt
A good example of these twisted
priorities is that the Commission did not even discuss
the draft Debt Policy that was presented to the Budget
Committee. This policy finally acknowledges what we,
and others, have been saying since 2007 about the
County’s huge $225 million debt. It says: “ the County
has too much debt and aspires to reduce this debt
significantly in the coming years.” The policy reviews
the risks of $100.7 million portion of the debt
financed by variable rate bonds and says the: “risks
associated with the TN loan program (variable rate
bonds and swaps) …. Is undesirable to the County
Legislative Body”. The policy goes on to say the
County’s $94 million worth of interest rate swaps
“have been deemed to be ineffective” and admits that
the County must “lower risk significantly in the
coming years by terminating swaps and converting VRDO
(variable rate bonds) to GO fixed rate debt". The
policy points out the Blount County debt per person is
nearly 48% more than the average debt per person for
all Tennessee counties. The policy says that: “the
County will not enter into any long-term obligations
until the debt level is within the target range (the
average for all TN counties)”. The policy also sets a
goal of no more than 20% variable rate debt and NO
interest rate swaps.
As a statement of goals, the
proposed Debt Policy is excellent. However, reaching
these goals will require a level of financial and
budget discipline that has not been demonstrated by
this Commission. It will take a great deal of time,
discussion and effort to change this record. The draft
Debt Policy did not help matters. It's sole proposed
remedy for our debt crisis is to raise taxes. It did
not even suggest considering budget cuts. It was also
not reassuring, when the members of the Budget
Committee immediately sought to water down key
provisions of this Debt Policy. If the citizens want
responsible government from their Commission, they are
going to have to demand that their Commissioners cut
budgets, reduce debt, and protect their hard-earned
tax money.
Only YOU can change
YOUR government PLEASE come to the
Commission meeting Thursday, December 15th at
7:00pm in Room 430 of the Courthouse
