‘The Tale of Two Budgets’: A Tax Increase Inevitable for Bulloch County

A tax increase appears to be inevitable based on the proposed FY 2026 budget under consideration by the Bulloch County Commissioners.

Commissioners met Wednesday night for a special-called meeting on the FY 2026 budget. Chairman David Bennett presented two budget options, noting that it’s traditionally the role of the county manager to present the budget but he did not feel that was appropriate. 

Bennett began by outlining a number of reasons for an increase in the budget in FY 2026 over FY 2025.

• Three natural disasters in the most recent fiscal year.
• The enactment of HB 581  
  • People enrolled in homestead exemption get a floating homestead exemption, so going forward the property taxes will only be able to increase by the amount of the Consumer Price Index. The county will tax those properties based on 2024 values, so despite an increase in values, Bulloch will collect at the 2024 value.
    • 5,000 people who are eligible for a homestead exemption who have not enrolled.
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  • FLOST –  The bill gives the provision of instituting a 1% sales tax to the General Fund to offset property taxes. By state law, you have to have a local referendum. The earliest this referendum can happen is November and there is no guarantee it will pass.
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• A 40% increase in healthcare premiums, which must be provided by law.
• Inflation – utilities, maintenance, and wages have to continue to go up or they will leave
• Constitutional Officers – Some services are required by law. Constitutional officers can sue county commissioners if they do not adequately fund (For example: Sheriff Alfonzo Williams sued Burke County commissioners over what he saw as a shortfall in funding, but was unsuccessful because a judge determined the funding was sufficient)  
• Elections, state-mandated training for the Elections Office and the state-mandated training for the Tax Assessor, in addition to other state requirements that must be funded by the county.

The budget as it stands, there is a $5 million difference between the anticipated revenues and the projected expenses.

“Roads to travel on, trash is picked up, and when 911 is called, someone answers. If we don’t do that, people die…We can’t fail on this stuff.”

The Tale of Two Budgets

Bennett said there are two budget options. 

• Budget #1 – Maintain the services and expand others. There is no millage rate increase – the rate will remain at 11.35%, but because of the increase in the tax digest, it is still legally considered a tax increase and some people could pay more. 
• Budget #2 – Full millage rollback to meet the Georgia Taxpayer Bill of Rights definition. In this case, the millage rate is rolled back to the amount where the county would not collect any more money than it did in 2024.

Budget # 1 Highlights

• 2% across the board wage increase and a 1% merit based increase
• 20 Full-time Public Safety employees
  • 8 in Sheriff’s Office – School Resources Officers
    • 2 are jail officers
  • 1 patrol officer 
• 2 Full-time public works employees
  • Both are for solid waste
• 1 part-time judicial/courts positions
  • Magistrate Court wants to hire another constable to serve warrants 
• This requires $2,485,763 from the fund balance to balance the budget
• Previously had $13 million spent in the last year on natural disasters. Much will be reimbursed from FEMA, but that money has not yet been provided. 

“This budget includes a tax increase,” Bennett said, noting that some property owners may not see a tax increase at all, however. “The value of a mill has increased.”

Maintain services across the county while allowing for increased staffing to meet increased demands for public safety.  

“It’s that simple. What’s the biggest con? It equates to a tax increase.”

Budget #2 Highlights

• 1% across the board and 0.5% merit-based pay increase for county employees
• Cuts 5 unfilled positions from Public Works 
• Cuts 1 unfilled position from Recreation
• No new hires
• Reduces education, travel, dues, professional services, maintenance, rental equipment, inmate meals, and small equipment in most departments
• Requires $2,063,512 from fund balance to balance the budget
• Allows for a full millage rate increase (no tax increase)

The pros, Bennett said, is that ‘everyone gets a full tax rollback.’

Cons: 

• cuts in staff – public works, recreation, public safety
• decreased revenue (from BOE) associated with SRO
• No SROs at city schools
• Less people working in the jail
• Increased response times for EMS
• Decreased training (some state mandated) will degrade ability to provide services
• Cuts made to budget are not sustainable 

Bennett said someone asked him what he thinks of the two budgets. “I don’t like either one of them. That’s the bottom line. But the reality is we can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”

“I’ve had a lot of people remind me I ran on lowering taxes. I did. There’s a way that we can do it, but it’s gonna hurt, but it’s also gonna hurt down the road because a lot of that incremental growth that we’re doing, I’m sure everyone in here remembers back in 2023, it’s probably why I got elected, it’s because of a big tax increase. Why did they increase the taxes then so much? Because they didn’t do it for years before that and then they realized ‘oh no, we gotta hire a bunch of people, we gotta provide a bunch of services right now or we’re gonna be in a bad way in this county.”

He said cutting the millage rate and the budget in FY 2026, FY 2027 will present a much worse situation. 

“It’s not pretty. It’s ugly. I don’t like it.”

Public Comment

John Robinson — Presented on the proposed budget cuts and the impacts on the recreation department. He had a full PowerPoint which read ‘Enhancing Quality of Life Through Community Engagement.’ He said budget decisions aren’t just financial, but social because parks ‘bring people together, foster neighborhood pride, and encourage volunteerism.’ He then spoke on how underserved and low-income communities rely on parks for mental and emotional well being.

Chad Averitt — Thanked elected officials, staff, and the people of the county who work together. He then asked that commissioners maintain or increase the amount of funding for the parks and recreation services. “We have a parks department that’s second to none for a community our size.” He said he supports public safety and public works, too.

Ted Redman — Asked how much money is currently in the rainy day fund. Bennett said about $20 million was there before the natural disasters, less the $13 million spent over the last 11 months. Bennett said a 28% budget fund balance is recommended (or 28% of $69 million.
$5.9 million has been paid back to the county.

Lawton Sack — Stated a lot of doom and gloom was presented in the presentation about what is required by law.

“We’ve never pushed for a public safety cut…The culture and recreation budget is set to go up $1.6 million this year, and could otherwise go to funding the state mandates…

There seems to be a middle ground that was missed in the two extremes that are present. We can fully fund our sheriff, judges, tax assessor, but there’s been a lot of talk that there’s no fluff to cut.

We have to be careful because we are talking about the taxpayer’s money…The people of Bulloch County are tired of their taxes going up. 

“If you’re tired of hearing from me, listen to the people of Bulloch County…as long as you ignore the voices of Bulloch County – 2-1 they spoke…There’s room in this budget to do this with a full rollback.”
(6/19/25 -This paragraph has been updated to correct an error in which it was reported that Sack stated ‘parks and recreation.’ The video timestamp reflects that Sack said ‘culture and recreation’ at the 40:30 mark)

Cassandra Mikell  — She expressed her disappointment that only one budget was presented and that was one prepared by CFO Kristie King.

“The public deserves clarity and transparency in the budgeting process. You presented two budgets. We’ve only had one from Kristie. Where’s yours? Why wasn’t it put out before a public hearing so that the citizens could legitimately weigh in on what y’all are talking about today? We can’t weigh in on something that we haven’t seen both sides. You told us a couple meetings ago that you were going to present your budget as well but I don’t see any numbers. Where are the numbers?”

Bennett asked when Newkirk presented the changes to his budget. He said the day prior. He then asked King when she presented hers, but her response was inaudible.

Mikell then suggested the hearing was premature if all of the information wasn’t available for public review. She asked if they were open to having a roundtable with citizens. Bennett said ‘We’re at the point now where we have to make a choice.’

Kathy Yawn — Shared that she appreciated the decisions the commissioners have to make. 
She said cutting positions would hurt people and livelihoods, though the proposed cuts were for unfilled positions. 

Commissioner Comments

Bennett then called for a motion to conclude the meeting, at which point Commissioner Nick Newkirk asked if commissioners were going to have an opportunity to talk. 

“I don’t believe any of my proposed cuts had any cuts to existing positions. I think we can work with the tax cut budget. I know if we hire the eight SROs, that will give us more money from the BOE that we can actually hire the six EMS workers that we want to put in Stilson,” Newkirk said. 

He said it’s little things that add up, like travel and education for the commissioners. He said his proposal for cuts did not include current staff and it didn’t address all 22 proposed in the original budget. It was six or seven potential staffing positions.

He then noted that he didn’t see any anticipated revenue from the well mitigation fund or the wells set to go online in July 2025. “We’ve got money coming in, we just have to lay low until we get there.”

CFO Kristie King then said the direction she was given was to merge the budgets and show the cuts as deep as she could to try and show what it would take to cut.

Commissioner Timmy Rushing said the county does not have to maintain a fund balance, they could spend every penny of it. “We’ve got a sheriff’s department to build, we got bonds. The way you conduct business up here, it sets the credit score. So if we don’t maintain and watch after that…we’re heading into hurricane season. You cut that fund balance down to nothing and we sittin’ here waiting on the well water or waitin’ on whatever, waitin on and waitin on and we ain’t got a fund balance and we got the jail comin’, everybody knows that, and those that don’t know, there’s gonna be a judicial annex right behind that with several millions of dollars, so if it ain’t played right, today, it’s gonna change the future.”

Interim County Manager Randy Tillman asked Bennett if there would be other staff comments. He then thanked King for her work and appreciated the support. He said the commissioners sat in a room for an excess of three hours with the budget team. 

“I support the budget as prepared by Kristie and her team and think that that is the right thing at this time,” Tillman said.

Commission Ray Mosley said he echoed what Tillman said, noting that he personally spent more time on the budget this year than in recent years.  He said he doesn’t like a tax increase but if commissioners had not voted on the rollback last year, they wouldn’t be facing the issue this year.

Bennett said if it comes down to people being harmed or a tax increase, he’s going with the tax increase.

By the conclusion of the meeting, four of the seven commissioners had expressed support for a budget that would require a tax increase.

Since the meeting was only a public hearing, no action was taken.