No Change to Tax Rate in OC

Residents of the Golden Corner can breathe easy knowing that the tax rate remains at 215 mills, unchanged from a year ago. At their meeting Tuesday night, the Oconee County Council decided no change to the tax rate was required this year after hearing the annual report of Auditor Ken Nix. Oconee County Councilman Paul Cain shared these thoughts on the tax rate. “There are really three big reasons why we kept the millage where it was. Number 1, every year we are required to set our budget prior to actually knowing what Duke Energy’s assessment is going to come in at. Mr. Nix received that assessment about a week and half ago, I believe, and it came in higher than we had budgeted for; however, we had balanced our budget this year. To avoid raising the millage, we did not make annual required contributions because we felt that we were a little bit ahead in our contributions to the state mandated retirement, so that actually was in excess of $500,000 that we did not make in an effort again to balance the budget. Number 2, right now our sheriff’s deputies, at least their starting salaries, are less than those in other communities are. In order to stay competitive we are going to eventually and I would love to do it as soon as possible, raise those salaries of our sheriff’s deputies so that we can be competitive and we won’t lose our well-trained and experienced law enforcement officers. Number 3, our roads and bridges are in pretty good shape. In our last budget meeting, we were given a report that council commissioned and we discovered that our roads score a 78 out of 100 on a metric that is used to measure that. A 78 is pretty good but I think a lot of the folks in the community would agree that there are some roads that are maybe a C+ or B- average. To maintain our roads at the current level, we are looking at an additional $450,000 a year. So there are a lot of things that we are kind of putting off, so decreasing the millage right now is really not an option, we are doing our best to make sure that we don’t have to increase the millage.” The Oconee County Council’s unanimous vote Tuesday night to leave the millage rate unchanged from last year and with Duke Energy’s higher assessment, the county can expect an extra $518,000 in tax revenue.