Gilmer County’s 2022 budget is reaching its final planning stages.
“As of right now, we don’t have a final budget, but we have a balanced budget,” said Gilmer County Chair Charlie Paris.
He said the maintenance and operation budget is in place, but may see some fine tuning.
For 2022, Gilmer County will have a maintenance and operation budget of $31,879,762. This will be more than $5.5 million higher than 2021 when the budget came in at $26,299,024.
Work is still being done on the capital budget. The road department portion has not been added in as of Monday, but Paris said it will come in under the $7,814,267 total capital budget of this year.
“We’ve known that revenue has been up all year long,” Paris said.
Commissioners adopted a rollback rate millage, which Paris estimates will net them close to $360,000 over last year’s housing assessments.
Revenues took a large increase in sales tax tied to tourism.
“That is the biggest single thing,” said Paris.
Gilmer County has always been a destination for tourism, but with COVID-19 affecting long distance travel, tourists began taking more day trips and visiting places which were in driving distance.
County salaries, which have been a point of emphasis this year, will reap the revenue windfall.
Paris said salaries across the board will see increases, but particular attention is being paid to starting pay.
Current starting pay for the road department is $10 an hour. Starting road deputies receive $17 an hour. Gilmer County jail personnel begin at $15. Firefighters in the county have a starting pay of $13.80 an hour plus a $2 an hour stipend if they work on an ambulance.
Final changes have not been locked in, but Paris said these starting wages will all see increases.
Inflation has pushed pay higher in many private sector industries. Paris said the county pay raises are necessary to keep pace. Many employees could see pay increases moving to fast-food or box-store jobs. Even longtime employees would see an increase in pay at local industries.
“We just need to become more competitive with basically what is going on everywhere else,” Paris said.
A special called meeting may be held between now and the December meeting of the board of commissioners to make final tweaks, but the budget should be ready for final approval at the regular board gathering.