The meeting kicked off with McCracken County Judge Executive Craig Clymer giving his presentation once more on why he believes they should implement the proposed insurance tax.
His presentation covered the following information:
• The county having spent from savings for over a decade.
• The counties bond rating decreasing due to poor financial condition.
• The tax rate being 14 percent lower than in 1990.
• The PVA property evaluation conundrum.
• Deferred costs such as paving, equipment, & property maintenance.
• Research into comparable counties.
• The effect of the pension crisis on the county.
"I can tell you that myself and the three commissioners have put an incredible amount of time into trying to get to the bottom of this. We don't like taxes, we know people don't like taxes, we've got to pay the taxes ourselves too." Clymer continued, "The way I look at it, you keep your own property up, you want your street, neighborhood, and block to be nice, don't you want your county to be nice too? We just know certain things have to be done to get us up to speed."
Many citizens showed up to share their concerns over the proposed tax, which would impose a 6.9 percent rate on auto insurance, and a 4.9 percent rate for casualty, fire, and other risks. The Fiscal Court shared that they felt there was no other way around imposing the new tax because of the financial situation the county is in due to past decisions.
After public discussion and a short recess, the Fiscal Court unanimously approved the new tax.
Commissioner Jeff Parker shared his thoughts on the increase.
"We are paying for mistakes of past courts, we inherited a lot of this." he said, "When we took office the first thing we did was an audit and found out we were broke. Two years prior to that there had not been an audit. We're stuck with it. We're stuck with fixing it."
