After a contentious year of haggling over the property tax millage rate and the fiscal year 2018 budget, Cobb commissioners are spending Monday and Tuesday on a retreat to figure out future plans for handling spending concerns.
Chairman Mike Boyce and the four district commissioners will be meeting at the Threadmill Complex in Austell for a day-and-a-half of meetings and discussions. Last month the board adopted a $403.4 million FY 2018 spending plan that included the use of $20 million in contingency spending.
The county is facing another $20 million deficit for fiscal year 2019.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll get there,” Boyce said in a statement issued Friday. “What I’m trying to do is bring in a process where we as a Board collectively knows what the issues are then the Board gives me some guidance on how to build this budget.”
The budget battles also sparked conflicts between East Cobb’s two commissioners. JoAnn Birrell suggested closing the East Cobb Library. Bob Ott, whose district includes the library, proposed closing another library in his district and making organizational changes to the East Cobb Government Service Center.
Ultimately, the commissioners voted to close no libraries but delayed funding additional staff for the new Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center until after the budget was adopted.
For similar reasons this week, commissioners also delayed a vote to approve a construction contract for Mabry Park.
The Sewell Mill Library and Mabry Park cases center around one of the main items on the retreat agenda: Funding recurring operational and maintenance costs for facilities approved through the SPLOST (Special Local Option Sales Tax).
Northeast Cobb residents have waited for a decade for a passive park in their community, and Boyce and Ott in particular pledged that Mabry Park would be built. They also were adamant that new policies for funding continuing expenses have to be ironed out.
It’s a seemingly perplexing position for Cobb commissioners to be in, given that Cobb reported a record tax digest this year of $33 billion.
In the first big test of his administration, Boyce didn’t get enough support from commissioners to raise the property tax millage rate. His proposal to boost the rate 0.13 to fully fund the 2008 Cobb Parks Bond Referendum was voted down 3-2, with only South Cobb commissioner Lisa Cupid in support.
Boyce, who defeated incumbent chairman Tim Lee last year, pledged to support parks funding. But the Cobb Parks Coalition issued a statement before the millage rate vote saying fulfilling the referendum didn’t require a tax increase.
At a heated town hall meeting in July at the East Cobb Senior Center, many residents spoke out against a tax hike, which Ott and Birrell also opposed.
Boyce, who is a first-time elected official, issued a comment at that meeting that has been a common refrain at times during his first year in office.
“I have to pay for what your commissioners passed last year,” Boyce said. “It’s a bill that’s come due.”
