Passage of the Surry County fiscal year 2024-2025 budget occurred Monday evening as the board of commissioners unanimously voted to approve the final recommended total of over $103 million.
This marks the first time the county budget has crossed the one hundred million dollar mark.
Surry County Manager Chris Knopf advised, “On June 11 the board held a work session to go over the recommended budget and make a number of changes. Consensus was reached at that time on these items.”
From discussions and changes agreed to at that meeting, he advised that $544,437 was added to the original budget projection. The new total budget is projected at $103,517,053. The amount of general funds needed to balance the budget would be $7,301,316.”
What many Surry County residents care most about, and what draws much of the attention, is the property tax rate which will remain unchanged at $0.552. This will be the fourth consecutive budget year with no increase to that rate.
Knopf outlined highlights of the board’s decisions such as to increase the three school system’s current expense amount to $1,320 per pupil. “That’s an increase from $1,280 currently. That will also carry over to the charter school’s allocation and the virtual charter schools,” he said.
“The board also decided to add four new School Resource Officer positions which would allow for one SRO per elementary school in the county school system; that amounts to an increase of $439,014. Also discussed was an increase to the Register of Deeds budget of $11,248.”
There was no discussion Monday or recognition given that Pilot Mountain had opted to end funding their own SRO at Pilot Elementary in their next budget.
Knopf said the board decided to increase general fund contingency by $130,500 and explained, “This amounts to a transfer of funds and dedicated line items for Seams Ministries, Tri-County Ministries, Foothills Food Pantry, Yokefellow, The Shepherd’s House, Helping Hands, Grace Clinic, Surry Medical Ministries, Echo Ministry, and American Red Cross into the general fund contingency where it will be held until a process can be developed to evaluate public purpose dollars and how those can be justified by each of those agencies.”
That process for evaluation of public purpose dollars, to include assurances agencies are serving Surry County residents and that there is no duplication of services with the county, is still under development. At the June 11 meeting, Knopf told the board it may be first of the year before such determinations can be made.
Other items agreed upon, as previously reported, included an increase for Elkin City Schools from $0.116 to $0.126. An increase to the Pine Ridge Volunteer Fire district tax rate from $0.82 from $8.67 was approved, representing half the increase they requested. Four other volunteer departments requested increases as well but were not approved. The board chose to wait for a consultant to analyze rural fire service and make recommendations to the county on how to proceed in an era where finding volunteer fire fighters, or volunteers of any kind, is difficult.
Chief Deputy Larry Lowe of Surry County Sheriff’s Office spoke during the public forum and expressed concern, “There wasn’t something in the budget that we thought was.”
“We had presented in our budget five more detention officers. Without those positions some things could be in jeopardy including misdemeanor confinement program and the litter pick up program that all of us want to do. Some mental health, substance abuse programs, and any of the educational programs that now we have a facility for it, we’d really like to try to add some of that,” he said.
Lowe reminded the new jail has already been reconfigured due to overcrowding of female inmates. The numbers this week were striking, “In February we were at 257 inmates and were surprised by the jump up that high. This morning, we were at 297 and for several days we have been over 300 inmates.”
Lowe has been asked what the state mandated ration of officers to inmates is and has advised there is no set number only a requirement to complete a certain number of rounds in a given time. Currently, he said the ratio is 33.3 inmates to one detention officer and noted, “Even if we added the five, it still only gets us to 28.5 inmates per guard.”
Chair Van Tucker said that with the budget before them for approval, there was little that could be done at that time and Commissioner Larry Johnson agreed. The board took no action but said they looked forward to discussing the matter soon.
Chief Austin Love of Mountain Park Rescue and the Surry County Rescue Squad Association thanked the board for a partial increase to their funding. He discussed the need to to reduce barriers to volunteerism, “If we don’t address this volunteerism... I may come to you and tell you there’s no volunteers left. That would leave 4,000 of my neighbors and friends without service, without rescue.”
Commissioner Eddie Harris said the same inflationary pressures that his constituents are feeling are felt by the county as well, “We do the very best we can, and I think this budget reflects a sense of fairness.”
“There was a little disagreement, but we worked through it all,” Vice Chair Mark Marion said. He noted that this is the first county budget to cross the $100 million threshold which means to him, “Business is good in Surry County.”
“Sometimes you have to balance the requests with the money available, or the ability to raise that money, and a lot of times that goes back to the tax base of the people, the good people of Surry County, that pay it,” Tucker said.
“So, there is an in between on those two — between request versus funding. We tried to strike the best chord that we could... I’m delighted we were, once again, able to provide more services to the people of Surry County without raising taxes to pay for it.”
Most Popular
Comments / 0