Budget Committee Meets Tonight

The Budget Committee of the Sumner County Commission will meet tonight at 5:30 PM at the County Administration Building in Gallatin.

The agenda is exclusively focused on the 2013-14 budgets to be considered by the County Commission, including possible votes on the budgets for next year and a discussion and possible votes on financing for the budgets. 

Not on the calendar explicitly (but sure to be discussed) is the schools budget.  In the past, the Budget Committee has proposed a tax rate at meetings like this and then passed all the County Budgets except for the Schools Budget.  Effectively, this sets the amount of money available for schools for the upcoming budget year.

Of course, this happens BEFORE the School Board has finalized its budget -- which is slated to happen in May this year, earlier than ever before.  If County Commissioners were to attend the School Board budget meetings and wait to set a tax rate or budget until AFTER the Schools Budget is discussed, some of the tension between the two bodies might be resolved.

The Budget Committee is chaired by long-time opponent of school funding Jerry Stone, who once compared supporters of schools to Kool-Aid drinkers with no grip on reality (A reference, no doubt, to the Jim Jones debacle). 

Tune in tonight to see if your County Commission continues to egg on the fight with the School Board or if reason prevails and the Commission waits to hear from the School Board before setting the final budget numbers.  And by waiting, were talking about 20 days or so -- still plenty of time to get everything hashed out in June and the budget set before July 1st.  Readers may recall that it was nearly October last year before the school system had a final budget.