THE COUNTY'S PROPERTY TAX BASE CLIMBS TO $13.5 BILLION
Henderson County commissioners spent much of their meeting on Wednesday looking at taxing and spending priorities that will likely span the next four years.
After well over a hundred budget requests, commissioners zeroed in on about $63 million in spending priorities...including education, law enforcement, public health, the environment and other local issues and priorities.
An immediate priority, county commissioners took the first step in an estimated $4 million emergency request from the county public school system to replace the heating and cooling systems at Flat Rock and Rugby middle schools, voting to move forward with designing plans to replace the failing HVAC systems over the summer break.
Superintendent Bo Caldwell addressed commissioners at their Wednesday meeting about the need, saying the roughly 40-year old galvanized pipes in the HVAC systems at the two schools are in imminent threat of failing altogether.
Caldwell said the repairs had been scheduled in the schools’ regular maintenance schedule with its capital improvement dollars without having to come to commissioners.
“Unfortunately now our time is running short,” he said, adding that the projects would otherwise have to be completed over a phased period of several years without this influx of funding, and “I’m not guaranteeing those pipes can make it.”
School maintenance crews are continually repairing those pipes which are now so corroded, Caldwell said, that it’s difficult to find a strong enough piece of pipe to attach the repair to. That’s what led the school board to rank this project at the top of its priorities for when it came back to the board of commissioners in May to request the funding.
“We need these dollars now,” he said. “We need to start the planning process, the bidding process so we’re ready to roll as of June and do some work while the children are not there.”
The request was for $2 million at each school to replace the HVAC systems.
It was reported at Wednesday’s meeting that the county’s property tax base has risen to $13.5 billion....up $2 billion over the tax base prior to the recent re-valuationl.
