Some homework done by Carter County Commissioner Mike Hill helped sway a vote during Monday night’s special called meeting by the Carter County Commission at the Carter County Courthouse.

The commission called the meeting to address three recent vetoes by Carter County Mayor Leon Humphrey. The vetoes stopped resolutions that approved an inter-fund loan of $500,000 to fund security upgrades at the Carter County Courthouse, an 11-cent increase of the property tax, and the County budget for the 2018-19 fiscal year.

After contacting the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office, Hill was put into contact with a senior auditor at the office and from that discussion, Hill discovered that the County should look to the debt service fund, which he feels is at a healthy limit, without raising taxes.

“The first thing an auditor would ask of the County is why if we have 200 percent and more of the resources available to pay the County’s credit card bill for the entirety of next year, then why would we be pumping 24.5 pennies off the ad valorem rate (tax rate) into the general fund debt service and mandating an 11-cent tax increase,” said Hill during the meeting.

A motion by Hill to uphold the Mayor’s tax veto and to send the budget back to the committee was seconded by commissioner Nancy Brown before being approved 21-1 with commissioner Larry Miller voting “no.”

The County Commission and Budget Committee, which now has to go back through the budgeting process, has a deadline of Aug. 31 to present a balanced budget to the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office. After Monday’s meeting, County Commissioner and Budget Committee Chair, Sonja Culler, said she is confident that the committee and commission can get a budget in place before the deadline.

“I am very confident,” said Culler. “Nobody wanted a tax raise, but we just didn’t have anything else to do. But now that we have been made aware that we can touch debt service, I feel sure the group will go with that.

“In the eight years that I have been here, that is the one thing that all of our finance directors have said, ‘Don’t let your debt service get too low because it hurts your credit,’” added Culler. “So we kept our hands off of that. We didn’t realize that we had such a ‘windfall’, as you would say. I feel quite confident that they will now take the 11-cents (tax increase) off.”

Culler commended Hill for contacting the Comptroller’s Office.

“I really appreciate him calling, because we had not called the Comptroller’s Office,” said Culler. “We were just going with information that we had.”

Also during the meeting, the commission didn’t have the 13 votes needed to overturn the veto of a resolution to use an inter-fund loan to pay for a single-point entry security system at the Carter County Courthouse. The motion to overturn the veto was made by Culler and seconded by Commissioner Brad Johnson. Commissioners William Campbell, Robert Acuff, Mike Hill, Al Meehan, Bradley Johnson, Isaiah Grindstaff, L.C. Tester, Danny Ward, Ross Garland, Bobbie Gouge-Dietz, Culler, and Kelly Collins voted yes on the motion with commissioners Buford Peters, Nancy Brown, Ronnie Trivett, Charles Von Cannon, Timothy Holdren, Randall Jenkins, John Lewis, Larry Miller, Ray Lyons, and Robert Carroll voting no.

The Budget Committee will meet on Monday, Aug. 13. The County Commission is scheduled to meet on Monday, Aug. 27 to vote on the budget. The Aug. 27 meeting was originally set for Aug. 20.