Right here in Patrick County, for the last three completed fiscal years (2013, 2014, 2015) the Patrick County Board of Supervisors have spent more than they received in taxes.
According to the official auditor in 2013 the deficit spending was $2,289,353, in 2014 it was $2,611,334 and in 2015 it was $988,130. That totals $5,888,817 in deficit spending in three years.
We can only assume that the county supervisors are tapping into some savings account to support their out of control spending. All the while raising taxes!
What happens when the piggy bank is empty? Taxes go up! And not just a little bit.
One county supervisor commented to me “we were told these (the audits) were just snapshots.” Three deficit “snapshots” in a row start to be a moving picture! A slow motion movie picture of a whooping train wreck of a tax increase.
How are we doing in 2016? Studying the official county website and minutes of the supervisors’ meeting (the last date of which published on the website is September 2015) I find no indication of any report on the 2016 fiscal performance. It is a question that needs to be answered.
Looking back at the revenue and expense budgets for those same three years in which deficits occurred the reports show that the budgets were balanced! Who is being held responsible for this obvious failure to manage expenditures to the approved budget?
You might have thought you had to go to Washington, D.C., to see deficit spending, but it appears you can save yourself a trip and see the same sort of out of control government spending right here at home.
Bill Moore
Woolwine
