A few Cobb citizens addressed county commissioners Tuesday in the first of three required public hearings on the proposed Cobb fiscal year 2020 budget and millage rate.
The $475.8 million proposed for general fund spending is nearly six percent over the current FY 2019 budget of $454 million.
An overview of the budget proposal can be found here; a more detailed line-item budget proposal is at this link.
The overall budget proposal, which includes fire and E911, debt service and other categories outside the general fund, comes to $998.9 million, up from the current $966 million.
After several weeks of pressure from public safety employees and citizens, the budget proposal includes a seven-percent pay increase to boost salaries and benefits as well as retention issues.
It’s part of what commission chairman Mike Boyce has said is the beginning of a longer-term process toward step and grade raises and other incentives for police officers, firefighters and sheriff’s deputies.
No millage rate increase is proposed, but the anticipated tax digest is growing by an assumed 3.4 percent, to a record $39 billion.
Therefore, the county has to advertise the current millage rate as a tax increase since no rollback to the current year’s tax digest total of $36.7 billion.
Even with additional coffers for FY 2020, the proposal includes using $18.4 million in contingency (or reserve) funds to balance the budget.
That flustered Pamela Reardon, a real estate agent in East Cobb. After last year’s tax increase, she told commissioners, “you told me we would have plenty of money. And now we don’t have any money. What happened?”
She apologized for suggesting in such harsh terms that the contingency “looks like it’s being used like a slush fund.”
Reardon also said she thought a seven-percent raise all at once seems excessive. “I’m not opposed to raises, but who decided that?” she said.
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That raise would amount to $5.2 million of the proposed contingency spending, with the largest chunk, $7.5 million, for a four-percent raise for other county employees.
Another $2 million would be earmarked for police operating and capital contingency, with another $1 million for undesignated use by the commissioners.
What’s missing from the budget is $850,000 in non-profit spending that in the past has gone to social-service agencies like MUST Ministries and the Center for Family Resources.
State. Rep. Mary Frances Williams, a Marietta Democrat who represents part of northeast Cobb, and who is a former advocate for non-profits, calculated that amount to less than 0.0020 percent of the budget.
But removing it completely would have a far greater detriment that tax dollars saved, she said, since county funding provides “seed money for nonprofits to get matching matching grants.”
Additional public hearings on the budget will be as follows:
- Tuesday, July 16, 6:30 p.m.;
- Tuesday, July 23, 2019, 7 p.m.
The final date is also scheduled for budget adoption. The meetings take place in the second floor board meeting room of the Cobb government building, 100 Cherokee St., downtown Marietta.
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The bonus is considered a merit-based payment, and will go to employees in the police, fire and sheriff’s departments who scored satisfactory or higher job performance ratings last year.
He added that the map is subject to change, and that doing so “is under discussion. We want to hear from people.”
