Our County Budget and More

by Pulaski County Citizens for Open Government (PCCOG)

(Editor’s Note: This piece is entered unedited. These views are PCCOG and not any other groups within the paper. If you’d like your own letter to the local government published, please reach out to us on any platform and after a careful review, we would be happy to publish in this paper as well)

Dear Chairwoman Walters and Supervisors:

With it being budget time, we thought it would be a good time to again share with you some of our thoughts and concerns. Your public budget process this year seems even less fulsome than in the past, so we hope you will be accepting of our thoughts as your constituents.

We remain concerned that the real estate tax relief afforded our elderly and disabled citizens is significantly less than the averages for the threshold for relief and amount of relief provided in the counties which surround Pulaski County. We note that our percentages of elderly and disabled citizens are largely the same as our neighbors, but we tax real estate at a higher rate than most of our neighbors. It sure seems that the case can be made for Pulaski County providing at least the average amounts of tax relief as our neighbors.

When you all very briefly considered this issue earlier you expressed concern about the impact enhanced tax relief for the elderly and disabled would have on the county budget. We recognize this is a very valid concern. Hopefully, over the passage of months, you have been able to acquire this information so you can make an informed decision, one that you can share with your constituents. If you haven’t done the research, may we suggest that you check with Botetourt County which has about the same population as Pulaski County, similar percentages of elderly and disabled citizens, a real estate tax rate a few cents higher, and elderly and disabled tax relief that is consistent with the averages of our neighbors.

Also concerning our county budget is a perception that the number of county employees has grown significantly over the past several years. There is even a rumor floating around that Pulaski County has among the highest number of public employees per capita in the entire state. All of you are conservatives who we assume believe in small government. We don’t believe you want to be a state leader in per capita public employees.

As you consider our fiscal 2026 budget, we ask that you take a look at the number of county employees projected in the 2026 budget and compare it to the number of county employees five years ago. We also ask that you take a look at the total cost of the county payroll you are being asked to fund in 2026 compared to the amount funded five years ago. As you know, the county’s population has been mostly stagnant or even slightly declining over the past five years. We are unaware of any additional county services being provided now that weren’t provided five years ago other that the newly created county paid fire department. Obviously, the county’s payroll is far and away the largest part of the county’s budget. Understanding the size, rate of growth, and cost of the county’s workforce seems to us to be very important for you to consider as you fulfill your fiduciary and oversight responsibilities, and as you consider the 2026 county budget.

We note and congratulate you on tomorrow’s “Reveal” regarding the proposed Sportsplex. As you know, we have previously expressed our concerns to you about the lack of information shared publicly about this project to date. We watched on YouTube Mr. Sweet’s extended comments about the proposed Sportsplex at last November’s VACO conference at the Homestead and frankly wondered why that information was not being shared directly with Pulaski County’s citizens. It appears that approximately seven million dollars in public funds have been spent to date on this project and millions more will be required to complete the proposed facility. We can assume that the annual cost to operate and maintain a 160,000 square feet facility will be significant. The large expenditure of public funds required for this project requires, in our opinion, an equivalent amount of transparency and public disclosure. Tomorrow’s event is a step in the right direction in this regard and several of us look forward to attending.

Just a couple of remaining things we wanted to mention. The last publicly available minutes for the Pulaski County Board of Supervisors are for your October, 2024 meeting. For the past four months, you’ve approved past meeting minutes as part of your consent agenda, but the minutes themselves seem to be missing. Surely, you haven’t been approving minutes that you haven’t seen, have you?

As you surely know, when you approve minutes you trigger a legal requirement that the minutes become publicly available. Preparing, approving and making publicly available meeting minutes shouldn’t be as problematic as it seems to be in Pulaski County.

Finally, please consider providing a public update on the broadband expansion project. We know you don’t have much, if any, actual control over the completion of the project, but you’ve made a number of comments in the past about when this “game changer” project would be completed that have proved inaccurate. So, an update would be appreciated.

Thank you for your efforts on behalf of all Pulaski County citizens.

Pulaski County Citizens for Open Government