Hamilton County leaders are hoping for more information and more conversation as they approach a vote on a nearly $1.1 billion budget. After weeks of presentations from department heads across the county government and organizations that take funding from it, the County Commission is adding two hearings — on the general government and on schools — to the next fiscal year’s budget process.
A hearing on the general government budget is set to be held Wednesday in the commission room of the Hamilton County Courthouse, after the commission’s regular Wednesday meeting that starts at 9:30 a.m. The hearing on the schools is set for June 11, also in the commission room, and should start after the commission meeting ends.
The commission’s chair, Jeff Eversole, R-Ooltewah, called for the extra meetings.
“As chairman of the Hamilton County Commission, I believe we have a responsibility to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, and that starts with transparency and public involvement,” Eversole said in a Thursday statement. “I encourage anyone who cares about how your money is being spent to be a part of the process.”
He said in the statement, issued through Waterhouse Public Relations, that as part of the standard lead-up to budget votes, the schools had offered some additional information to the county, which commissioners received earlier this week.
The Board of Education presented its proposed budget for next school year during a meeting last week. In contrast to a previous draft budget, which included an up-to-$18-million deficit, the district’s current proposal is balanced.
Commissioners also heard a proposal for the county’s general government — which encompasses the county Mayor’s Office, among others — last week. County Mayor Weston Wamp, a Republican, presented the budget to commissioners then. If passed, that budget would not require a tax increase, a topic that has triggered conversation and arguments across Hamilton County this spring.
(READ MORE: Hamilton County Schools is experiencing a budget deficit. How did it get there?)
TAXPAYER MONEY
In a phone call, Eversole said his goal was transparency and good stewardship of public funds.
“I think we need to talk about it,” he said of the budgets. “The money that is sitting in there is taxpayer money. And I don’t know of a single taxpayer that doesn’t know how much they’re spending on their utilities at home.
“I think that we need to be doing the same thing, and we need to make sure that we’re managing our dollar frugally,” he said.
The process should be open not just for commissioners, but also for members of the public to ask questions about spending, he said. He said he expects to ask questions concerning spending trends over time. He asked for that information from the schools and has received it, he said, but he would like more details. He also said he hopes to make sure that money is spent toward a necessary end.
Adison Lambert, a spokesperson for the county schools, said that the district has not yet received any specific questions from the commission to be addressed during the hearing. Lambert said the district expects more information ahead of that hearing.
“Per our understanding, the additional hearing will be a time to answer specific questions from members of the County Commission,” Lambert said by email. “The HCS administration is not preparing any new information to present.”
(READ MORE: Hamilton County home values spike, sparking tax concerns)
MORE HEARINGS
Commissioners including Eversole have in recent weeks called out budgeting practices from the county Finance Department and the budgeting process from the Mayor’s Office, which they have argued have obscured some spending and left little time to digest intricate but important details. The Mayor’s Office and some other commissioners have countered those criticisms and pointed to the launch this January of an efficiency task force modeled off federal cost-cutting efforts as an example of commitment to fiscal responsibility.
The commission has authority over the total funding for schools, under state law, but it can’t direct that spending as it can in other parts of the county government.
That constraint matters to Commissioner Joe Graham, R-Lookout Valley.
“We’ve already had budget hearings, and we’ve already heard the schools,” Graham said by phone. “We’ve already heard from the department of general government. But, you know, maybe there’s something there that they haven’t shared.
“We can only vote their (the schools’) budget up or down, and they brought us about a balanced budget,” he continued. “Even if we saw a smoking gun in there or something that we want to change, we don’t have the authority.”
And he hasn’t seen anything worth raising alarms over, he said. Graham has both criticized aspects of the schools’ approach to the budgeting conversation this year and praised the school board for bringing the commission a balanced budget. He has also defended the county finance team from criticism of overly creative budgeting.
“I just feel like we’re overstepping by trying to tell them what they can and can’t do with the money that’s provided to them through our budget,” he said of the schools hearing.
State law gives the commission time between a budget presentation and budget vote, he said, to think through spending for the next year. Graham, who was first elected to the commission in 2010, said he couldn’t remember ever being asked for further budget hearings during the process. He served on the commission between 2010 and 2018 and won election to a new district in 2022.
Paris Vinnett, director of communications for the county Mayor’s Office, likewise said the additional hearings were unusual, and that they came as a surprise.
“At this time, we are not aware of any specific outstanding questions from commissioners,” Vinnett said by email. “Last week, the Mayor’s Office reached out to every commissioner to offer one-on-one meetings to discuss the proposed budget in detail. To date, only two commissioners have responded to those requests.”
Contact Mariah Franklin at mfranklin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.