Montgomery County, TN – Montgomery County has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years and continues to work to keep up with demands on services, public safety and schools. In the 2010-2011 school year, the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System experienced an increase of over 700 students. If the student population increase continues as it has over the last several years, the school system will top 30,000 students in the upcoming school year.
It was recently released that the Per Capita Personal Income for Montgomery County has increased to $38,270, placing Montgomery County as 4th in the state. With this increase comes a decrease in BEP* funding for schools of around $2.5M.
This year’s budget committee took a different approach in preparing their recommendation to the County Commission. They meticulously scrutinized each individual department and office budget of the county and reduced the overall requests by $3.1M. This was a long and time-consuming process, but the budget committee wanted to make sure that they thoroughly looked at each request and presented a fiscally responsible budget.
The result of this process will be a $.26 proposed property tax increase that will be presented to the full commission at their June meeting. Of the increase, 8.4 cents will be allocated to the school’s general purpose school fund and 17.6 cents will be allocated to the county’s debt service fund.
The increased amount allocated to the debt service, will allow for needed county capital projects, including a redesign of the Veterans’ Plaza parking lot and a renovation of the South Guthrie Community Center, as well as increasing the borrowing capacity of the county. This will bring the property tax rate up to $3.14 per $100.00 of assessed value. This increase will take the property tax rate back to a rate familiar to citizens, as $3.14 was the rate three year’s prior.
This increase includes the renovation of Northwest High School, along with the building of two new elementary schools, Carmel in the Sango area and Pisgah to alleviate overcrowding in North Clarksville schools.
There will be a public hearing on the proposed budget on Monday, June 6th, at 6:00pm in the Third Floor Conference Room of the Courthouse. The Commission will discuss the proposed increase and budget at the Informal Commission at 7:00pm on June 6th and will vote on both, at the Formal Commission meeting on June 13th at 7:00pm in the Commission Chambers.
* The Basic Education Program (BEP) is the funding formula through which state education dollars are generated and distributed to Tennessee schools. Click here for a general and non-technical overview of the BEP.
