County Commissioner's
Office
County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner
Q. What was the purpose of the county setting up the Union
County Building Authority?
A. Many counties in Georgia have a building authority and it
is authorized by the Georgia Legislature. It is governed by
a board appointed by the commissioner. It is often utilized
for the bonding of capital projects, but in this case, we utilized
it to obtain financing for the five new fire engines recently purchased.
The individual volunteer stations are paying the interest and the
next SPLOST will be utilized to pay off the fire engines. This will
not come from property tax receipts. The original amount
of the loan was $880,000. This will cover the cost of not only
the five new fire engines/tankers and necessary new equipment, but
is also expected to lower our ISO fire rating when it is re-rated
next year. This should lower your individual homeowner’s
fire insurance in many portions of the county without fire hydrants
and also some with them.
In the event of a fire, these new combination tanker/pumpers
now allow the fire department to continuously supply water to most
any fire scene even without fire hydrants. This has never
been possible before. However, without our volunteer fire department
whose members are able to constantly shuttle water back and forth
to the fire scene, even the trucks would not be enough. If
it is your home or property on fire, this is a tremendous improvement
over what we have had in the past and the cost is very reasonable.
Q. What other options could the county have utilized to
purchase these pumper/tanker fire engines?
A. The Asssociation of County Commissioners has a lease program
that we could have utilized with less difficulty; however, we were
able to obtain a lower interest rate of only 4.32% by utilizing the
Building Authority, which will reduce our overall cost significantly.
We also could have paid for the trucks with increased property taxes,
but chose not to take that avenue. The SPLOST funds are derived from
sales tax receipts which many people contribute to, including those
who pass through our county and do not live here.
Q. What budget items do we have that are not directly part
of the county operation?
A. Basically, every budget item is related
to something in the county; however, it is not always tied to organizations
that we control. For example we budget $38,420 for the Humane Society’s
Mountain Shelter to assist them with caring for animals from not
only our animal control officer, but from the citizens of our county. We
pay the Dept. of Family and Children Services $50,408 to assist
them with dealing with Union County families and foster children.
We budget $21,000 for the NGRMA (North Georgia Resource Management
Authority) to assist the county with grant writing, education,
and development of recycling programs. We pay $5,000 to the
Hiawassee River Watershed Coalition to help them with their operation
which tests for water quality in many streams and Lake Nottely
in Union County. We budget $29,480 per year to the operation
of the historic courthouse since we feel that it is a vital role
of our county to protect our heritage, plus the county owns the
building. We budget $2,000 to TULIP (Towns Union Literacy
Instills Pride) which provides literacy programs for the community
and jointly with Towns Co. and other organizations, we help support
the Reach of Song play as it searches for a permanent home. The
potential economic impact from this could be tremendous in the
future should this drama finally locate a permanent home. That
cost is around $5,000 a year.
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