We asked last week for more discussion of the budget by the Habersham County Board of Commissioners, and we certainly got just that Monday night.
The only problem is the discussion was crammed into a three-hour microwave meeting when it should have been started sooner.
It all starts with the tax digest, which still as of this publication has not been fully transmitted to the county financial office. County CFO Tim Sims said Monday night that he was hopeful it would be sometime this week, just in time for July 1 to begin a new budget year.
But that deadline is not for the tax digest. That deadline is for us to be done with the entire process. The digest should have been in by May 1, so this could begin at the proper time.
The delay was the first domino in a cascading buildup toward Monday’s contentious meeting, which saw the commissioners face the public and each other in budget discussions for the first time.
The commissioners said they had behind-the-scenes budget meetings with county leaders, one or two at a time to avoid an illegal meeting. But they did not receive worksheets on which to bring up their concerns, and that led to chaos Monday as they scrambled to find consensus at the last minute. Two hours into the meeting, that seemed like an impossibility, as the first motion to approve the hastily assembled compromise was voted down. That vote came after two hours of circular arguments that saw Commissioner Bruce Palmer openly question the running of both the road and fire departments, whether he intended to do so or not.
It saw Vice-Chairman Bruce Harkness express his numerous concerns and more or less admit that nothing could be done to assuage him to stop the increased spending. It also saw Commissioner Jimmy Tench express his customary dissent, but not in specific terms.
That left Chairman Ty Akins and Commissioner Dustin Mealor to be the bridge between the others, and after a long poker pause by Palmer led to the voting down of the budget the first time around, Mealor tossed his notes down on the dais and told his fellow commissioners to figure it out.
And all this came after the public was granted a second chance to comment on the budget, only to be met with silence by the assembled crowd.
We need the public portion of this process started sooner, and that begins with the tax assessor’s office giving Sims’ staff what they need to do their jobs. What we got was a rushed public discussion and a budget without a true tax digest or a millage rate.