County passes budget with no tax hike
Anderson County Commissioner Shain Vowell talks to Anderson County Emergency Medical Services Director Nathan Sweet. (photo:Ben Pounds )
The votes on the budget and taxes came at a special meeting Thursday, June 22.
Raises will be at least 7 percent for all employees, but with a higher rate for the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office.
Robert Holbrook, Anderson County finance director, said this increase was to stay competitive with other law enforcement agencies.
Anderson County Sheriff’s Office employees will get on average a 13-percent raise with different pay rate boosts depending on merit, position and experience.
Within the ACSO, office employees will average a 12.8-percent raise, corrections 12.81-percent, school resource 11.87-percent and dispatch 17.82-percent. Fourth District County Commissioner and ACSO Captain Shain Vowell requested not to get a raise since he was voting on them. Vowell works in the Anderson County jail and became a captain in 2019.
In the final vote, Sixth District County Commissioner Anthony Allen cast the only vote against the budget, which he said was due to the county’s libraries containing books he regarded as sexually explicit. County Commission has discussed explicit library books in the past, but Allen’s was the only comment on that subject Thursday. Rather, discussion centered around other issues including the pay raises.
“I don’t have a problem with the Sheriff’s Office,” Fifth District County Commissioner Robert McKamey said. “It’s just I’ve talked to some other county employees and they want to know why. Why does one department get more than the other?
“The same person that writes you all’s checks is saying, hmm, why didn’t I get that kind of a raise.”
“If you are watching surrounding counties, this is kind of the norm right now,” Holbrook said in response. He said Budget Committee developed the plan for the Sheriff’s Office raises. Anderson County Sheriff Russell Barker also defended them.
“This isn’t the men and women of this office being greedy. It’s not the men and women of this department asking to be treated special when it comes to pay, but as it stands this is market driven. Everyone around us is doing these things.
“Public safety is expensive, and it’s the right thing to do to be quite frank with you,” he said adding that deputies involved in fights encounter hepatitis C positive blood.
Before the amendments passed, Holbrook said it was a minimum five percent raise for non-ACSO employees. Vowell made an amendment to use the hotel-motel tax fund balance for the Chamber of Commerce and Anderson County Economic Development Association and then use the $154,500 saved from the general fund to increase the employee salaries up to seven percent. Eighth District Commissioner Phil Yager seconded.
Stephanie Wells, director of Adventure Anderson County, which uses hotel motel-tax criticized the use of these funds for recurring expenses not directly related to encouraging visitors to the county, which she said was their proper use. Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank in response said more industry encourages more visitors for training.
At Frank’s suggestion County Commission split the two measures of using the hotel-motel tax and the raise itself. Regarding the hotel-motel tax funding, all but Commissioners McKamey and Second District Commissioner Robert Foster voted to pass it.
First District Commissioner Tyler Mayes made the motion to pass the budget with the seven percent raise and amended it to also use $50,000 of federal American Rescue Plan funds to add an additional two percent raise for Emergency Medical Services employees to bring them up to the same seven percent raise level as the other employees. Sixth district Commissioner Aaron Wells seconded. This final vote passed 13-1 with Allen voting no and Seventh District Commissioner Steven Verran not present.