Curtain Call?

This week the budget for fiscal year 2014-2015 will be presented to the full County Commission. And, while I do not enjoy budget season and have no desire to extend it beyond what is necessary, I sincerely hope that they do not pass this budget as presented. It only addressed a portion of the needs in Jefferson County and that just simply isn’t good enough.

I don’t want to see a big tax increase but I am certain that this budget is simply patch work and will not answer any of the real issues that Jefferson County is facing. I am also sure that it will cost more than seven cents to address those needs. No politician, particularly one who is running for re election, wants to tell his constituents that a real fiscal plan is going to be costly. Reasonably, the individual home owner will not see a great impact to the family budget but large land owners are another story. It is unfortunate that those same large land owners already know that their property value took a hike in the last reassessment. Taxes are going to have to go up. Or, the Commission could use the more than half a million dollars that was “found” in the last budget committee meeting and, rather than cushioning their fund balance, pay for some of the real needs of this County.

I don’t know what they will decide to do. They may simply do nothing and pass the problem on to the next generation of County Commissioners. They may do nothing and simply take the budget committee’s recommendation for nothing above last year (including necessities). Or, they might decide that they have a job to do and actually take a stab at fixing our financial plight. That would be the hard, correct thing to do. Are they even capable of coming to a consensus? Who knows. But it would be a nice curtain call after four years of tragic comedy.