Day: July 21, 2017

  GALLATIN, Tennessee — After three years of county revenues exceeding ever-increasing annual budgets, the Sumner County Board of Commissioners by a vote of 21-3 adopted a property tax rate of $2.50 per $100 of assessed value, unchanged from last year, at their regularly scheduled July meeting. The $2.50 tax rate, a greater than 20 percent increase over the $2.08 certified tax rate, originally implemented in 2014 by the then newly-elected County Commission in a controversial special-called meeting which immediately followed a special called Budget Committee meeting, met with much public resistance. When the topic was added to a commission meeting agenda three meetings later, finally allowing Sumner County residents to speak on the issue, the county administration building was overflowing with protestors, with dozens making public comments against the tax increase and causing the meeting to go until after 1 a.m. The annual budgets for 2016, 2017 and 2018 have projected county revenues to grow by more than 3 percent per year above and beyond the impact from the 2014 property tax increase.  The total growth in revenues for the three-year period was conservatively estimated at $9 million. The actual growth has far exceeded those estimates, yielding an additional…