In one of those late-night movie marathons that dot the holiday weekends, I stumbled across the movie “Dave.” It’s one I hadn’t seen in a while and as I was too tired to channel surf much more, I watched the second half of the movie. One scene has been in my brain ever since.
Our everyday Dave-off-the-street, who is filling in for his presidential look alike, invites his friend from home up for the weekend to rework the federal budget. I guess the thought of stepping in with a magic solution like that captured my imagination and set me back down at the computer to make my own attempt at raising the revenues to balance the proposed county budget. So taking things in rough terms, the county needs $1.5 million and the schools need about $5 million. Okay lets start with that figure and go to work.
Borrowing an idea from cash-strapped New Jersey’s budget this year, we’ll impose a $250-a-year tax on billboards. That should raise some funds, and maybe clear some of those eyesores off the view of the mountains that the folks travel here to see. Guessing that there are about 400 billboards spread along the county roads, call it $100k in revenue.
Next idea, a balancing of the rental scales. The cities have a hotel tax; the county needs one at about .25% lower. That way a business with an office in city and cabins in the county will be more willing to pay the county tax. I hear several of them ride the fence now, with the cities saying they aren’t in the city because their cabins are in the county. The county isn’t as built up on these properties as the cities, call it $400,000.
The plan would also have Johnny King’s office check to see that all the rentals blossoming across the landscape are being assessed as commercial rather than residential properties. I suspect a few thousand dollars in money will trickle in from that change.
Next will follow the suggestion from the County Commission and raise the tax on the registration of motor vehicles, otherwise known as a wheel tax, which it really isn’t. To see a wheel tax in action, ask any Virginia native about the yellow sticker on their cars. Sevier County has long had one of the lowest car registration rates in the state, but raising the rate is a fairer burden. At $25, it’s a $1.75 million boost to education and Sevier County moves into a registration rate similar to school systems of its size.
Now the dreaded item, the property tax. An 8-cent increase gets another 1.5 million dollars. About $900,000 would be dedicated to the schools. Two cents brings the county about even with its needs. The county budget would also see a request to the three cities for some minor funding of the Senior Center, fair enough if Sevierville owns a quarter of the property.
The remaining one-cent, about $180,000 would be used for a new roads reserves fund. The department needs the money next year but instead of it becoming a continuing revenue stream, it would be set aside in future years under this new plan. It would then be used as a start-up for matching funds for mass transit or clean air vehicles.
The school system is still short and Dr. Parton will have to make some tough cuts. The plan will also encourage a letter-writing campaign to the Governor, asking why one of the fastest growing school systems took a cut after he pledged no reductions to K-12 funding.
Wow, this is so much easier in the movies. Of course the movie had the federal budget, which has more fat to cut. I still come up close to two million short in the school system. Thankfully, I’m just a writer, not a Commissioner, and while I will wonder what my new tax bills will be in 2004, there’s another patriotic movie on and I haven’t seen Eddie Murphy in “A Distinguished Gentleman” for a while.

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