With a roughly $4.7 million budget shortfall looming, Wise County faces the prospect of cutting 20 to 25 county jobs.
Meeting Tuesday to discuss tax rates for the next fiscal year, county supervisors immediately went into a closed session that lasted more than an hour. Then they agreed to recess the meeting to March 5, buying themselves more time to deliberate.
On Feb. 12, in front of a packed audience, the board of supervisors heard 45 people speak against effective real estate tax increases caused by a recent property reassessment.
The county’s current real estate tax rate is 69 cents per $100 of value. But the reassessment that went into effect Jan. 1 raises property values to the point that supervisors would have to lower the rate to 55 cents for tax bills to stay roughly the same.
The average countywide value increase for residential properties is 35%. This is the most recent assessment since 2022.
At the Feb. 12 meeting’s end, supervisors agreed to recess to Feb. 17. At Tuesday’s meeting, they went into closed session to discuss investment of public funds, personnel and legal counsel.
Returning to open session, Vice Chair John Schoolcraft moved to recess again, giving the board more time to evaluate the information it had just received.
Chair J.H. Rivers said the board was told that even if it keeps the tax rate at 69 cents, the county might have to eliminate 20 to 25 jobs and cut county services to make ends meet.
The March 5 meeting will start at 6 p.m. in the county schools Education Center, 628 Lake St., Wise.
Budget shortfall
According to Karen Mullins, the county attorney and interim county administrator, keeping the real estate rate at 69 cents and raising other tax rates, including personal property, by 14 cents would still leave the county about $4.7 million short.
Mullins says the county needs firm tax rates by March 5 to begin the billing process.
Under the leadership of former County Administrator Mike Hatfield, who left at the end of the year, the $83.3 million fiscal 2025-26 budget was balanced by plugging in $7 million from a seven-year-old fund designated in part to pay down construction debt from recent high school consolidations. The current budget is about $788,000 less than the 2024-25 budget.
In previous years, the county depended heavily on short-lived federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars and on spending down its unbudgeted fund reserves to balance budgets.
In mid-December, Hatfield said the county had spent ARPA dollars to balance the budget in fiscal 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24. In fiscal 2024-25, that money was gone, so the county pulled $4 million from its combined school debt/economic development fund to make ends meet.
County treasurer Delores Smith has said that in May 2025, she urged supervisors not to approve the current-year budget, believing the proposal was overbudgeted by $7 million, but that her concerns were not heeded. In late January, she told the board that the county doesn’t have enough money to meet its budget through the end of June. The school system agreed to delay spending more than $10 million until June, giving Smith time until spring tax collections are done and she has a better income-to-spending picture, she noted.
Doug Mullins, the county’s commissioner of the revenue, said keeping the 69-cent rate and raising the personal property rate would gain about $5.5 million, but spending cuts would still be needed.