Stephens Co. Convenience Sites To Remain Unchanged

Stephens County will not make any changes to its trash convenience sites.

County Administrator Phyllis Ayers made that announcement Wednesday.

Ayers said that the commission had considered holding a town hall meeting to gauge opinion on changing how the county operates its convenience sites.

Possibilities had including closing some convenience sites or privatizing their operations, among others.

However, Ayers said that commissioners heard a great deal of public opposition immediately to any change in the convenience sites and decided a town hall meeting was unnecessary.

“Since word has gotten out, there has been a massive amount of phone calls and so based on all the phone calls received, they have decided not to have a town hall meeting and just leave things as it is right now,” said Ayers.

Ayers said the county is also continuing to work on re-starting some sort of recycling program.

Currently, the trash convenience sites cost the county about $150,000 to operate for an entire fiscal year.

Ayers said that the proposed Fiscal Year 2016 budget she has presented to commissioners keeps convenience site operations unchanged and that no changes were ever put into the proposed budget.

As for that proposed Fiscal Year 2016 budget, Ayers said it totals about $12.97 million in the general fund budget.

She said that is about $70,000 more than the general fund budget approved for the current fiscal year.

That proposed budget does include a .25 mill decrease. That would take the county’s millage rate from 13.66 to 13.41 mills.

Ayers said one of the main reasons that the county is able to look at decreasing the millage rate in the coming year is through savings this year.

Tuesday, county commissioners unanimously approved adjusting a number of line items to put aside extra revenues and money not spent in the budget this year into fund balance.

Ayers said that will allow the county to save unspent money this year and put it aside to have to go towards next year’s budget.

“There are several revenue items that we are going to be favorable on,” said Ayers. “One was the tax collection rate, (which) is going to be 99 percent and we budgeted 97 percent. One was our Local Option Sales Tax revenue is running better than we budgeted and (also) our insurance premium tax.”

Ayers said about five departments also had money in their budgets that they would not need this fiscal year for one reason or another.

County commissioners will hold a first public hearing on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget at their next scheduled meeting on June 9.