Habersham County Commissioners are digging into their budget for 2016 in a series of meetings this month. They’re still very early in the process but it looks like employees will get a pay raise and the property tax rate should hold steady.
“I think we’ve got to raise salaries to be competitive,” District 5 Commissioner Ed Nichols said during this week’s budget meeting. “We can’t keep losing good people to nearby counties.”
There is no employee raise built into the draft version of the county’s $20 million spending plan but an informal poll of commissioners at the meeting set the range between 3% and 3.5%. At 3% the cost to taxpayers is $235,463 annually in salary and benefits. At 3.5%, the raises would cost a total of $274,707 per year.
County Commissioners aren’t yet settled on how much they can raise salaries mainly because they don’t yet know how much they’ll have to spend next year. The tax digest, the full value of all taxable property within Habersham County, isn’t complete and taxes make up 81% of the county’s revenue.
Since they don’t have the actual number, Finance Director Trey Wood prepared the 2016 draft budget based on the most conservative estimate. The proposed spending plan also holds the line on property taxes. Commissioners say they want to keep the millage rate steady at 10.785.
