Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Next meeting for the public hearing for the 2027 budget, we're going to start with an invocation by Commissioner Goodman, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let us stand as you're able. Let us bow our heads. Our Father and our God in heaven, we come to thee in prayer. We thank you for all the many blessings you bestow upon us in this beautiful, beautiful county that we live in. Father, help us to be good stewards of that for which we are responsible. And as we consider these budget matters, give us wisdom and insights and tolerance. Lead us in the right direction for the good of the order, Lord, we pray. Father, as always, we pray for the safety of those who put on a uniform and step out into this world to protect us on a daily basis, both here and abroad. Father, we pray for their safety and that they can come home to their families. Father, we pray for those who are standing in the need of prayer for illness, those who are bereaved, and any other needs that your faithful servants may have. Father, all these things we ask in thy name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

You roll call, Katie.

Commissioner Smith is not here this evening, but he is attending virtually, just so everyone knows.

Okay.

But all others are present.

So moving on, we'll entertain a motion to open the public hearing.

Make a move to open the public hearing. We have a motion and a second. Second.

All in favor? Motion carries. Okay, we're here to receive comments from the public regarding the 2027 budget. As always, keep it to three minutes, if possible. Is anybody signed up for? You want to go ahead and do your, okay, go ahead and do your presentation, then we'll start that. Thank you.

Scott, can you bring that up for me? All righty. Good evening, everyone. Tonight, what we will do is just show a shortened version, I guess, of the budget. You've seen it several times now. And this is what our proposed budget is for 2027. So, as I've mentioned before, balance budgets, the local governments are required to adopt and operate under an annual balance budget for the general fund, each special revenue fund, capital project fund, and each debt service fund in use by the local government. So, and below that just shows you where your budget is balanced when revenues are equal to expenditures or when revenues plus fund balance equals expenses. Revenues plus transfers in equal expenses or revenues plus fund balance plus transfers in equal expenses. This year's budget for 2027 is our proposed budget here. We've got projected revenues of $48 million, and proposed expenditures of $51 million. So in order to balance the budget, we would need $2.4 million there. And that is an increase from last year of $3 million. Some of the changes here, we've got the expenditures are projected, like I said, $3 million above last year. There is included in these some of the general fund. This is just a summary of those changes. The pay scale adjustment, there is 5% for fire rescue, the sheriff's office patrol division, school resource deputies, corrections in jail, and E911. There's also a performance-based increase up to 2.5% for employees on their anniversary. The coroner, it was put in the budget to move him from part-time to full-time. And the Joint Development Authority proposal includes a $500,000 increase, and that's due to the MOU that we currently have in place. And then the special appropriations here, we have the Kingsland TAD number two, grant match appropriation increase from fiscal year 26. We will require a transfer out to capital improvements of $1.7 million in this budget and to our E911 supplemental funding of $714,000. And then also we have some changes in the insurance rates, but employee health insurance increase was 175,000, workers comp a little over 10,000. And on the property equipment and liability, I will mention that we got some new rates in, so we will be lowering those rates. We got the final quotes just this week, and so those will be going down almost $400,000. So that's great news. and we will be reporting that. EMS, we, well, it was about 370. So, yes, that'll help the budget quite a bit. And then on EMS, there's a new fire reporting system. The split between the EMS and unincorporated fire changed. It went from 88% EMS and 12% fire to 86% EMS and fire 14%. And then additional funding requested by the Wood-Byden Library. And this is just a snapshot of the proposed capital expenditures. We have those in the government funds. We have capital improvement of 1.6 million. ARPA funds, which we have left, is 144,000. SPLOST 9 is 2.1 million. JL and staffing fund $142,000 and the naval base funding of $700,000 for our total government funds of $4.8 million. And then in our solid waste, $647,000. So total capital expenditures are $5.4 million. And this picture just shows, this snapshot is just the total revenues expenses by fund. What I've been talking about was the general fund, so that's at the top, the 51 million, 51.2. And then the other lines are just the expenses for the other, the rest of the funds. So the difference was 86.6 million last year, and it'll be 87.3 this year. Increase of 716,000. And the remaining budget calendar, we only have one meeting left. That will be our special called meeting on June 23rd to adopt the annual budget at 6 o'clock. And that's it.

Thanks, Lisa. Any comments, questions from the board before we receive public comments? Seeing none, have anybody signed up?

Yes, Mr. Steve Gross.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. So the budget and a tax increase appear to be somewhat interrelated at this point. And I wanna discuss cost cutting. I wanna discuss where money can be found. And I think your best place to find money is the JDA. And I don't know how close to you fellows work with the JDA, but I've attended a couple of their meetings And I'd like to give you an example of some of the things that happened there. So there's a meeting about six weeks ago. Mr. Coughlin was attending by phone. The rest of the board was there. And Mr. Coughlin called in and he said, hey, we're facilitating a deal. It's not something we're actually doing, but we're facilitating a land sale. And it's going to bring in a modern asphalt plant on Route 17 near the new industrial park. Not in the new industrial park, but near the new industrial park. And all the board members nodded and smiled like this was a wonderful thing. And unfortunately, you can't talk to them. They won't take any questions. But the question I was begging to ask was, do any of you have any idea what a modern asphalt plant is? Because they don't. None of them have a clue. And so they're going to bring in a modern asphalt plant, which I believe is going to take up about three acres. Does anybody have any knowledge of that that could correct me? But that's what I'm understanding is it's going to take up about three acres and pay industrial taxes on three acres. So to give you an idea what that means to the general public in that area, in that single area. The asphalt plant you have there now can probably produce 50 to 75 tons an hour on a good day if everything keeps running. And they probably have storage in the air in their silos for somewhere around 100 or 150 ton. And so if you divide that by 16, you could get 15 trucks or so an hour out of there until they ran out in the silo. So in an eight-hour day, you might get 25 or 30 trucks in and out. And you double that because the trucks that go out are going to come back in with milling. So you might be generous. You might have 100 trucks in an eight-hour day go out of that little batch plant. Now you put a modern asphalt plant in, they produce 400 tons an hour. And they'll put 2,000 tons up in the air. So divide that by 16. Now that plan is going to want to service highway jobs on 17. That plan is going to want to service Jacksonville Airport runway jobs. That plan is going to want to run. They're not putting an asphalt plan in because they want it to sit fallow. They're going to want it to run. The access to that asphalt plant will be Coleraine Road from I-95 and it will be Harriot's Bluff Road from I-95. And you could be talking in an eight hour day, 500 trucks, 250 out and 250 in. They're gonna wanna work at night because paving goes on at night on the major jobs. So what you're bringing into the community in taxes, will be so far offset by the destruction of roads, by the destruction of the area. Everybody within three miles is gonna smell asphalt every minute that that plant is running. Nobody's gonna like that. There's gonna be tremendous amounts of dust created by that asphalt plant. But we're bringing it in because nobody knows these things. Nobody thinks to look forward and say, hey, this is gonna cause many more problems than it's gonna bring in in taxes. We've gone down this road 100 times. We've gone down this road with Spaceport. We've gone down this road with the Gilman property. We continue to go down this road. We've got to stop. You have to cut costs. I don't know who the JDA is working for, but I'd love to see a balance sheet of what they've brought in in taxes versus what they're giving them. Now, my understanding is over the next three years, they've been promised $3 million a year from the county in tax money. If that's correct, that should be pulled back. We don't need three JDAs. They're working for Kingsland. They're working for St. Mary's. They're doing nothing for the unincorporated area. There's a JDA or a similar body in St. Mary's. There's a JDA or a similar body in Kingsland. Let them take care of Kingsland and St. Mary's with Kingsland and St. Mary's taxes, but there's no reason for us to be funding a JDA that's only hurting us. They're doing nothing to help us. No one is going to buy the Gilman property until the cleanup is complete. Are they seeking Superfund funds to clean up that site? Nobody, anybody who has any large real estate development knowledge knows that no big developer is going to come in there and say, I'll take the risk of the cleanup course. That's an open checkbook. When you say, I'm going to clean that up, you're opening your checkbook. No remediation company is going to come in and say, okay, I'm going to do this for $8 million, and I'm going to stick to that $8 million. It's an open checkbook job. And until it's cleaned up, no one will buy it. And at this moment, I believe... If my calculations are anywhere near close, we're paying about $70,000 a month on that note out of our taxes. My taxes, your taxes. It's not fair to us what's going on in this county with these huge bills that keep coming. We're paying it on the spaceport. I know the JDA denies any knowledge of that, but it's still a huge problem now. We've got the JDA dealing with the Gilman property and doing things like bringing in this asphalt plant. It's a disaster. for the county that the county doesn't need. And no discussion was had. You guys didn't, I'm looking at you guys and you're like, well, I didn't know this was happening. So this is what's going on with the JDA. It's all in secret. You cannot have a back and forth with them. And they think that if they bring in more industry and more commerce and more commercial real estate, it's gonna lower taxes. I defy you to show me any place in the state of Georgia, except for where the Hyundai plant where that worked and Hyundai's not coming here. There is not a single other county where a JDA has been able to lower taxes, and I've done my homework on that. And if you can show me one, I'll prove you wrong. Anyway, so that's my theory is let's start cutting taxes. Let's start cutting costs before we start raising taxes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Gross. Anybody else? John? John?

John Wojcik, Clarks Bluff Road. You're right, Mr. Groves. I agree with you. I thought I was the only one that bought the, I guess it's JDA. We need a little bit more accountability from these people. My wife and I, for the last 30 years, like 401k, we go through a finance company and we give them our money to invest for our retirement later in years, 30 years now, we are reaping the benefits. If we didn't, we'd get rid of that financier, the stockbroker, okay? We'd get rid of them. In a way, we're investing in a stockbroker called the JDA. We're giving them our tax money Investing in a return. I don't see the return. Mr. Turner, you think that we're going to have 70-30 or 60-40? I don't see that. It's not going to happen. And the JDE is not going to help us get there. We have a lot of mom and pops that are paying taxes. And what the JDE... Are you satisfied with what the JDA has done in the last 20 years, the last 15 years, the last 10 years? Have we invested our money and gained anything from these people? It is secretive. It is to us taxpayers. They want another $500,000 on top of their one million. And we got through telling the Sheriff's Department they can't get a printer. Or we'll buy a printer this year, but somebody else got to get a printer some other time. Or we got the EMS people talking about these packs or whatever they call them, put in their vehicles. Oh, we're going to wait. They're going to wait one more year. But we don't say nothing about the $500,000 for the JDA. On top of the $1 million. Most of the meetings I attended have been at home because I had a medical issue, and I watched it on video. And Mr. Smith, Commissioner Smith said, when he was talking about the JDA and the money, the $500,000, he said, what does the MOU state? None of you could come up with an answer of what the MOU means. I'd like to know what the MOU we agreed upon for $500,000 more on top of their million. We need accountability. We're holding you guys accountable. It's on social media about JDA. I don't know why they're adding more people here. I mean, district what, two? District 5. I'm District 5. Where's all the other districts at? They show up when the dead gum when you raise taxes. They ought to be here on this budget. Sorry about taking more than three minutes, but it's just I don't think I'm taking up anybody else's time. I just don't like the JDA for what they have produced. I want accountability. I'm not against them. It's just I haven't seen them produce anything, especially St. Mary's Airport, the Gilman property, and whatever they're doing, the so-called industrial complex. We don't know about the tax abatement that they're receiving. What kind of tax agreements have they got? We're not going to reap any of that, Mr. Turner. until years down the road. We don't know how long those abatements are good for. It could be 10 years, 15 years. Westinghouse, they did in St. Mary's. They spent an awful lot of money on that fabrication. They're not gonna pay any taxes. They got abatements too. Something else came to my mind. Well, I'll leave that alone. The fire, the trucks that caught on fire at the landfill. There was a group of two men that got an honor for putting out a fire on a truck, I think it was. And then there's another truck that caused a fire and destroyed a many thousand dollar piece of equipment, caught on fire. It was an electrical fire, what I understand. Something's going wrong if we have two trucks at the landfill that cause fires. They were hand-me-down trucks from some other agency. We got to hold the landfill accountable. Whoever is driving these trucks, I don't understand why they got so close to an $800,000 vehicle and that truck caught on fire and destroyed that compact or whatever it was. I appreciate what you guys do. I appreciate Lisa and her crew, EMS, the chief. You guys, the sheriff, they deserve what they asked for. I understand there's some cuts to be made, but the JDA, look at them, $1,500,000. Thank you.

Thanks, John. Anybody else?

Ricky?

Rick Madden from Bullhead. I'll be a little bit briefer than John, but I'm not going to beat the dead horse about JDA. Y'all already know how I feel about it. Everybody in here knows how I feel about it. I don't think we're ever going to see a return on investment with them. Besides that, we still are not being fruitful with our money. Accountability is not happening in this county, and Lord knows you don't want me to bring my list of what I know about what goes on with wasteful money. I've got a big one. And I will sooner or later bring it out. And we have wasted enough money on just one single project that that $2.4 million, we wouldn't even have to borrow that from the fund balance. And I know y'all can't overlook everything. Joey can't overlook everything. There's too many people. I know. I've run a big old company before. You have to rely on your team leaders and your management. to run a fruitful operation. And if they can't balance their budget and do what's right without overruns, folks, I'm sorry. You've got to get rid of them. That's all it is to it. I've had to do it. Because I can't be everywhere. When I was overseeing Hercules, I could be everywhere at one time. Joey worked there with me. We had to turn that place around so everybody had a job. Now look here. If we don't turn this county around, y'all ain't going to have income coming because nobody's coming to this county when you keep jacking up taxes. My poor little old piece of junk that I live in just went up 54% in one year. Any of y'all want to sit here and tell me how that old mobile home goes up 54%? They don't increase in value. We all sit here and know that. So why did it? Everything we own here in the county, what does it do? Every year you depreciate it. Why? Because it makes your budget look good. Folks, we've got to watch what we're doing. People ain't stupid. I've looked at every little piece of property around me right now, and, Lord, the prices went up on the values. Well, that's just the value. Well, you can appeal it. Well, I plan on it, so does the rest of everybody. But when the value goes up, what goes up with it? The taxes. So, you know, you're raising taxes in a sneaky way, if that's what you want to call it, because there ain't no way this land's getting worth that. It ain't. I don't care what you say or what the assessors say. I mean, y'all don't know half of what's going on. Like I said, y'all don't know half of what's going on with this stuff. And you can't. There's not a single one of y'all that can sit up there and do that. That's why I preached to y'all for years about let's get in the citizen board. We only have to pick out. One department, every quarter, and look into them thoroughly. And I guarantee you, after a couple of quarters, all the rest of them will fall in line and they'll run a good budget. They won't be wasteful. They'll be more fruitful. When they do have a mistake, they will correct it and we won't get deeper and deeper. You got a bad habit of digging holes in here. When you make a mistake, you keep digging and digging and costing more and more money. That's not the way to operate, folks. Me and you can't do that at our house. And this county budget is no different. It's just a lot larger. And we've got to do something. You're taxing people out. I mean, I've known people that's been in this county for a long time that are leaving. Where are they jumping to? Jumping over to Brantley. Of course, they're getting increases too, but it ain't as bad. Nobody minds increases that you were getting better services. The only better services we're getting in this county or from our first responders in the sheriff's office. The only way I'm looking at it, you know, I can call one of them for anything. I've called them for lift assist and stuff like that with my mother, and they're right there. That's a service I can, you know, I wouldn't mind, and nobody minds paying for it, stuff like that. But some of this stuff is just ridiculous, and we'll discuss that in a regular meeting because I'll be bringing that up tomorrow. I don't know. I might wait two more meetings, but you'll get an earful of that. Thank you.

Thanks, Ricky. Anyone else?

I'm sorry?

You have to come to the podium.

Okay.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm getting old and forgetful. The last meeting I was at, Commissioner Smith was here, and I spoke to a couple of you guys, and the question I had was, how could I help to begin the process of eliminating the JDA? Because it has been eliminated in some other counties in Georgia, and he was going to find that out for me. And I had some pretty busy times, and I have not been back to see him since. And so I'd love to get that information. And I would be more than willing to be the one that begins that process if it takes a citizen to do it. I would be more than willing to start that ball rolling. And secondly, I just want to add a little something to what Mr. Manning said. And it comes from a retiree's point of view. And so I've been here about 12 years now. And when we came down here, Development was very under control. Of course, it was a different time. Housing was very different. We were still sort of feeling the repercussions of the 2008 mess, but right now, by all appearances, development in Camden County is totally out of control. It doesn't appear that anyone is watching over and saying, hey, how are we gonna make this level of development, this number of new homes, each new home brings new citizens to the county and each new home brings new students to the school system. I don't see any new schools. I don't see any school improvements. I don't see anything on the table. And if we're truly bringing this 15,000 new homes to the county, that's gonna almost double the total number of students in our schools. How are we gonna handle that? And where are the taxes gonna come from to pay that? Are we gonna be able to take enough taxes out of these new housing developments that we're building to even remotely cover that amount? But anyway, I'd love to have someone give me a little tiny bit of guidance on what direction to go to begin the dissolution of our county JDA so that those costs can go back into the tax rolls instead of coming out of the tax rolls. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? Questions from the board? Comments? Seeing none, motion to adjourn the public hearing. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Motion carries. Thank you all for coming.

The Press Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.