BRADY FLANIGANStaff Writer

It happened. The city passed their $39.4 million budget for FY26. Property taxes will be climbing 20 cents. ~$1 million of reserves is being set aside, and if the tar lays well, the roads might be headed towards improvement. Given the dry wind wafting through city hall on June 2—during the first of three budget hearings—it proved to be a fool’s errand to think anything else was going to happen. 

The majority of the budget is a copy-and-paste of FY25’s and was hardly a topic of discussion at the June 2, 9, and 23 meetings. The rifle was aimed at a special $1.5 million, 3.8%, the city needed to conjure for road and municipal building repairs. In many ways, all members of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen knew it was going to have to generate some new revenue from citizens, but that’s a bitter tincture to force the public to swallow—and an easy way for the doctor to get punched.

The impetus for the property tax hike, in many ways, was born at the behest of the public though. Most medicine is bitter. The public has decried Tullahoma’s less-than-immaculate infrastructure for a long time, and it has been a goal of Mayor Lynn Sebourn’s administration to band-aid these blisters. Years of neglect has created a pile-up of under-maintained roads that the city simply can’t repair on its scant margins. The engine just runs too lean. Since 2019 the city’s general fund has averaged a surplus of only ~1.36%. 

“The amount of roads we have to pave, with the increased price of asphalt especially, is exceeding our ability to pay,” Mayor Sebourn said in an interview in February.

When the proposal arrived on June 2, the board passed it as is, with two down votes—aldermen Kurt Glick and Busch Thoma. In many ways these were symbolic down votes, as nobody proposed any amendments that may have changed their opinions. Glick objected to the short window they were given to look over the new budget proposal, having only received it a few days earlier. He called for an organizational chart to better understand the city’s structure and spending. Thoma’s concerns were more philosophical, surfacing during an informal study session following the vote, where he questioned whether the city was granting money too liberally to nonprofits and whether departments could be made more efficient.

Since no amendments were proposed, the budget arrived on June 9 wearing the same clothes it was the first time. This time around, two proposals were floated for consideration. Alderman Matthew Bird submitted a modest half-page write-up that suggested trimming $7,500 from the beautification (forestry) budget and reallocating it to three local organizations: $3,000 to the Arts Council, $1,000 to the Historic Preservation Society, and $3,500 to the Hands-On Science Center. It was a cork at sea though, and was given little attention in the wake of a larger debate about paving, raising taxes, and spending nearly $1 million of reserve funds.

Glick, meanwhile, distributed a double-sided sheet. One side charted the city’s general fund revenue and expenditures from 2019 through 2026. The other outlined a proposal: keep the $750,000 allocation for road paving, but avoid the 15-cent property tax increase by cutting an equal amount from elsewhere in the budget. The $250,000 building maintenance allocation would be funded through reserves instead of taxes.

On paper, the numbers added up. However, this would mean diving deeper into the reserves to make up the difference and running the risk of passing the problem on to another generation. The plan didn’t name what needed to be cut through. It tasked staff with figuring that out. And with most of the general fund tied up in essential services—police, fire, sanitation—there was little appetite among the board to chase theoretical savings in a tight timeline.

From there, the tone hardened. The divide between Sebourn and Glick became clearer—not just over this year’s tax rate, but over the nature of municipal budgeting itself. Glick emphasized the growth in city spending since 2019, pointing out that general fund appropriations had risen by over $11.7 million. Sebourn, in turn, stressed that revenue had climbed almost in tandem, increasing by $11.5 million in the same span.

The board expressed willingness to save where it could. But with little time and few specifics, the odds increasingly favored the 20-cent hike.

It passed again. Four to one. One meeting remained.

Monday, June 23 now, and anything left to happen was going to happen then. Government fiscal years begin July 1 in Tennessee. Something had to pass, or Tullahoma may have been stuck with its FY25 budget, which could prove disastrous. It was time for the long meeting and the two hour line-by-line analysis. While this could’ve been done at any point during the three meetings, it took the night before the homework was due to get the city started on it. In the end around $250,000 in savings was found here and there. A notable one was the exclusion of all funding to the city’s community service organizations except the library and the Coffee County Senior Center. This means the Tullahoma Sports Council, Day Care Center, Rehabilitation Center, Humane Society, Civil Air Patrol, and a whole family of others won’t be receiving funding in FY26. Another $28,000 was removed from the Parks and Rec budget by electing to remove the city’s annual soap box derby, the girls’ softball league, and the Rock Creek Concert Series.

These savings gave the city the opportunity to remove the equivalent of 4 cents from the 20 cent property tax hike—a motion supported by aldermen Sernobia McGee, Bobbie Wilson, and Kurt Glick—but the motion failed 4-3. The general sentiment was that doing this would only cause the city to rely more heavily on reserve funds and strain the city’s ability to catch up in the future. So, on June 23 Ordinance 1651 passed as amended in a 6-1 vote, with Glick being the only no vote. The city saved $250,000 with budget cuts, and property taxes are rising 20 cents.