Smith County Logo.png

Smith County’s fiscal year 2023 budget revolves around the theme “staying the course,” putting the focus on continued attention to priority areas.

“Stay the course is there for this reason: Over the last six years I hope as people look back (and) … they see we’ve stayed the course on trying to make good budget decisions year after year, each year focusing on a different area,” Smith County Judge Nathaniel Moran said, as he gave an overview of the proposed fiscal year 2023 budget.

Budgetary issues cannot be solved within a year’s time, but rather priorities have to be chosen and stuck to in order to reach the end goal, Moran said. Some examples of Smith County staying the course include working toward increasing funding for the road and bridge department, investing in law enforcement and making moves for a new district court.

Moran emphasized that the budget presented to commissioners and the public Tuesday is a “living draft” that will change throughout the process.

In this budget plan, the tax rate is set to remain the same as FY22 at 33.5 cents. Moran said this rate will not increase during the budget process and he hopes to see it decrease.

“We’re really trying to squeeze the tax rate low and I really hope you guys see that,” he said.

Sales tax in the county is strong and in the next year is estimated to equate to about $27.5 million, Moran said. The growth in the tax rate over the last couple of years allows additional property tax reductions and savings.

Four areas of focus

The FY23 budget will put a focus on four areas: the 475th District Court, law enforcement staffing, road and bridge funding and judicial support service and clerk pay scale.

With the 475th court coming in, the county has budgeted for about $1.5 million in expenses relating to additional staff, operations for the court, benefits for indirect staff and other things. The district judge will not be paid for by the county but the state.

“We’re hopeful that that new court will actually help bring our jail population down, run cases through significantly faster as a collective group and allow our case loads to be spread evenly and appropriately between all of our district courts,” Moran said.

In the FY22 budget, pay increases were given to jail staff. In the FY23 budget, the focus will be placed on staffing law enforcement. Moran previously told the Tyler Morning Telegraph this is less about pay and more about making sure the county has the right number of positions to take care of residents’ needs.

Patrol deputies are one thing the county needs, so the addition of five more is included in the draft budget, Moran said.

Currently there are 104 sworn deputies in the county, 42 of which are on patrol duty.

This equated to a ratio of .91 deputies to 1,000 citizens. The national average is 2.17 deputies to 1,000 citizens. With the addition of five patrol deputies, the county average would raise to about one to 1,000 citizens.

“There is a need for more (deputies on patrol),” Moran said. “The coverage is thinner than what we need.”

The addition of other personnel such as one digital forensic tech, one courthouse bailiff for the 475th, two courthouse security and more were also included in the initial budget.

Road and bridge

Increasing funding for the road and bridge department continues to be a priority in the FY23 budget. Moran said over the next few years, the goal is to increase the dedicated portion of funding for this department that comes from the existing tax rate until it reaches 5 cents.

In FY19 the dedicated amount was 2.94 cents and was increased to 3.75 cents in FY22. The proposed raise for FY23 is 4.25 cents.

With increasing the funding to the road and bridge department, the goal is to reduce money transfers into the road and bridge fund down to $0. However, there will be a $11 million transfer this year.

This transfer is to cover the cost of Phase 2 of the Road and Bridge Bond package. Voters passed a $45 million bond for the project but the total cost ended up being $56 million.

The county committed to covering the additional $11 million rather than raising the cost voters would be paying, Moran said. The additional funds will be pulled from reserves set aside for capital improvement projects.

Construction of a new road and bridge facility will also begin soon and is estimated to be completed in fall of 2023. This project is being paid for with American Rescue Act Plan funding and capital improvement funds.

Salary increases

For those who work in judicial support and as clerks, a pay increase of approximately 14% is planned. Overall, the county will be raising employees’ baseline pay by around 5%. Elected officials will see a 3% increase.

In total, the proposed budget has a total of about $4.9 million in salary increases.

“Given the increase of the inflation over the last 12 months which is about 8.6% … we need to do what we can for our employees,” Moran said. “They are the meat of service that we provide to citizens in this county.”

Personnel working in judicial support and as clerks are receiving a higher pay increase because this is an area the county has been “significantly behind” on, Moran said.

“We appreciate the work that each one of these individuals does for us because they interface with the public as much, or more, than anybody else,” he said.

Along with pay raises, the budget also proposes 26 more positions be added to the county, raising total employees to 902. If approved as is, of these added personnel around 40% would be for the 475th District Court, Moran said.

Also included in the budget was a recommended change to the role of the county judge and pay.

“I want to give you an overview and a recommendation of what I think you need to do with this position as I roll out and the new county judge, Commissioner (Neal) Franklin, rolls in,” Moran said.

As it stands, the Smith County judge takes on the roles of chief administrator officer, presiding officer of commissioners court, constitutional county court judge and head of emergency management.

In the role of constitutional county court judge, the judicial responsibilities of probate, guardianship and mental health are all the judge’s responsibility. This role alone takes about 40% of the judge’s time.

The major intended duty of a county judge is to be an administrative officer, so Moran suggested some judicial responsibilities be removed and given to a county court at law. The judicial responsibilities over civil mental health matters would remain.

“I want to say I have all the faith in the world in Commissioner Franklin to take over the judiciary duties if he were to do that, but when I look long term at the health of the county I believe it’s best if he and every other subsequent judge focuses on administration,” Moran said.

With the judiciary responsibilities being removed, a $25,000 stipend from the state would be removed from the pay. As such, Moran suggested to make up for the stipend being removed the county increase the judge’s pay by 3%.

Currently the judge’s salary with the stipend is $130,243. The county’s part of this pay is about $83,000. Moran said with an increase of 3%, this would put the pay back where it is with the stipend.

Throughout the presentation Moran emphasized that this is only the first time the budget is being presented and there is a lot of discussion to be had throughout the summer.

Important dates in regards to the budget process are:

• July 26: Budget workshop held after regularly scheduled commissioners court meeting at 9:30 a.m.
• 9:30 a.m. Aug. 9: Commissioners to discuss tax rate.
• Aug. 15: Deadline to file proposed budget with County Clerk’s Office.
• 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Aug. 23: Public hearings on proposed budget and tax rate will be held.
• 9:30 a.m. Sept. 6: Public hearing will be held on proposed budget and tax rate and vote to adopt budget.
• Oct 1: budget goes into effect

For those who want to know more about the first FY23 budget workshop a live recording can be found on the Smith County Facebook, www.facebook.com/SmithCountyTexas .