Shannon WhitfieldUpdate: Walker County Clerk of Court Carter Brown said Saturday that the Internet service provided to his office comes through a state government program, at no direct cost to the county. Other departments are also in the courthouse. Brown said he doesn't know how much they pay for Internet.
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New Walker County, Ga., Commissioner Shannon Whitfield plans to borrow $8 million this year to pay down debt, and you better get used to it.
"It's not a good position to be in," said Whitfield, who took office Jan. 1. "Even with cutting and working through this, without doing some crazy things, we'll probably continue to do these [tax anticipation notes] over the next four years. It's what I'm projecting, a week and a half into the job.
"But hopefully, we'll be able to take out less and less and less [of a loan] over the years. We've got to get out of the short-term financing business."
Whitfield, who defeated former Commissioner Bebe Heiskell in November, criticized his opponent several times last year, saying she sunk the county deep into a hole without a plan to crawl out. He estimated the county's total long-term debt sat around $81 million.
Heiskell, who did not return a call seeking comment Friday, said during the campaign that the county's debt really was around $13 million - if you didn't count projects the county will pay for with sales tax revenue, or a federal court order to give Erlanger Health System $8.7 million. Heiskell appealed that order, and that appeal is pending.
During a commission meeting Thursday night, Whitfield said the county's general fund holds about $500,000 right now - just enough to make payroll at the end of the month. But he also needs to handle other bills in coming weeks: a $227,000 payment for a 5-year-old bond, a $1.2 million payment for a 1-1/2-year-old bond, and utility bills that actually were due in November and December.
To get by, the county will borrow $4 million from the Bank of LaFayette. The interest rate will be 2.95 percent, bank CEO Dave Gilbert said Friday.
Last year, Heiskell took out a $5 million loan from Crews & Associates in Arkansas, with a 4.25 percent interest rate. In 2015, she took out a $4.5 million loan from Rosemawr Management in New York, with a 4.5 percent interest rate.
Whitfield said Heiskell had to go out of town for loans because local investors no longer trusted the county government in her hands, which is why interest rates on her loans were more than 1 percentage point higher than this week's Bank of LaFayette deal. Asked about Whitfield's statement, Gilbert declined to comment.
Whitfield said he has cut about $55,000 from monthly payroll expenses with some layoffs and early retirements. He replaced Don Oliver, who made about $120,000 a year as the full-time attorney, with Robin Rogers, who will bill the county at a rate of $120 an hour.
Whitfield also cut a legal assistant, a special projects manager, two Mountain Cove Farms employees and County Coordinator David Ashburn. He also is not replacing two roads department administrators who retired at the end of December.
The commissioner said he also hopes to cut the county's utility bill. For some reason, he said, several companies provide internet service to the courthouse, as different department heads who work there independently hired their own providers. Whitfield wasn't sure why that was the case, and Court Clerk Carter Brown did not return a call seeking comment Friday.
"We're going to make sure every dollar that goes out of here screams, because it's been pulled and tugged on so much," Whitfield said. "When it goes out of here, it's been well-vetted."
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.