Roy Exum
When Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger revealed the first draft of the Fiscal Year 2018 budget, I believe there was a serious shift in everyone’s blood pressure on Tuesday. With most of the County Commissioners set against a tax increase in what will be an election year, the financial wizards at the courthouse squeezed together a balanced budget that will not require additional taxes.
Obviously our elected representatives are much relieved but for other department heads, it is the worst thing that could have happened.
Moments like a bare-bones budget are cause for strokes and heart attacks. Don’t get me wrong: The county’s top financial minds – Al Kiser and Lee Brouner – did a masterful job preparing the FY2018 draft, which will be formally presented to the County Commission this morning.
But either one of the accountants will confirm a great truth: A 1.7 percent increase is really a step backwards and it is definitely not enough for the forward thinkers who want Hamilton County to flourish. Our county, which has grown by roughly 30,000 people since the 2010 census to about 68,000, is terribly short-changing the citizens if we allow the mayor and the commissioners to deprive every neighborhood, especially where there is a school.
To increase the education budget by only 1.9 percent is every bit as regretful as 60 percent of our high school graduates taking remedial classes before beginning course work at Chattanooga State. The county citizens should be outraged if this budget isn’t amended and vastly improved with a reasonable tax increase.
There has been no tax increase for education in the last 12 years and no tax increase for the county’s general use in the past 10. (The Consumer Price Index has risen 44 points during the same time.) If there is anyone alive who believes Hamilton County should stay stagnant for another year, they are either slap crazy or running for public office again. Either way, this is nuts. We claim we are desperate to rectify our struggling public education system and then prove that’s just lip service.
Hamilton County is the third-wealthiest county in the state but our teachers are the worst paid in any metro district. There is today a genuine fear Chattanooga area schools cannot attract the best teachers. Worse, when word gets around distant campfires we are underfunded in darn-near every other department in county government, Hamilton County will be unable to compete for new industry.
Great goodness, we’ll soon be struggling as badly as 60 percent of our third graders who cannot read on grade level. The correlation is easy to see and the county wants to balk in the face of President Trump’s proposed education plans that will eliminate $1 billion (with a ‘b’) in Title 1 money. The majority of Hamilton County’s schools are Title 1. Hello!
For the record, 66 percent of the proposed $691,498,923 budget goes to the schools. That’s horribly short of what the School Board requested and includes not a penny for $24.4 million in prioritized education needs given to the commission. The budget also does not include any new schools nor any cures for a whopping $320 million in deferred maintenance.
Mayor Coppinger, far more astute on tax increases than I am, knows the public schools are underfunded yet hides behind the belief we shouldn’t make any big moves in public education until a permanent superintendent is seated. Heck, that’s next week. That’s also poor logic; it means we will have to wait until the FY2019 budget is presented to fill what are critical needs right now. We don’t have another year for the schools to limp along on a paltry 1.9 percent push.
I can see where a superintendent candidate would have second thoughts about accepting an offer to lead the HCDE with the poor financial backing of the Commission. The commissioners are expected to vote on the proposed budget six days after the school board offers the permanent position.
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There were no winners in the new budget but there was $313,000 allocated for a sorely needed Hamilton County Mental Health Court. The brainchild of Public Defender Steve Smith and Anna Protano-Biggs, it will save the county millions of dollars as its staff grows and more clients are added. There’s a cute story that they asked Mayor Coppinger for $280,000 and he was all over the idea.
But when he asked where they were going to put an office and got vacant stares in return, the Mayor laughed and added enough in the budget so Anna would have somewhere to sit. A wonderful attorney in the Public Defender's office, Protano-Biggs will now become a Hamilton County employee with Judge Don Poole administering the program.
The Mental Health Court will enable some patients, who are now in jail, to be freed under strict supervision. The idea is to make sure they receive and take the psychotropic drugs, which allow them to function normally and stop being cycled through the jail and courts.
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Sheriff Jim Hammond got a much-deserved 5.4 percent push, which will allow him to add 10 jailers and six School Resource Officers. (The budget says 16 positions in the jail, which equates to 10 trained officers.) “This will really help us, and we got enough to get our patrol fleet to where it needs to be.” Coppinger and Hammond are working “overtime” to solve the horrible overcrowding in the County Jail and while both are bound by non-disclosure agreements (there are two or three national corporations vying to fund and/or operate a corrections facility that would combine the jail with the county workhouse.)