BRADY FLANIGANStaff Writer

Tullahoma’s proposed 20-cent hike in property taxes passed its second hearing Monday, June 9, before the Board of Mayor and Aldermen—unamended. Now it’s two-thirds of the way towards going into law. It’s not actually an ordinance about property taxes a priori; rather, it’s the end of the government’s fiscal year in most places across the U.S, and this means it’s time for cities to curl up and mull over spreadsheets. The discussion for FY26 has been circling around road improvements. The public and city officials have acknowledged this issue for a while, but the rat keeps slipping back into the walls. And the longer it hides, the more it gnaws on infrastructure. As Mayor Lynn Sebourn has said, Tullahoma’s roads have gone under-maintained for two decades—passed down from one administration to another—because fixing years of slow negligence takes a large initiative. Large initiatives take large efforts. Large money. So the main talk has been about raising property taxes as the way to fix this.      

The state of Tennessee requires municipal budget ordinances to undergo three votes before passing, mostly to grant time for public feedback and tweaking. City Administrator Jason Quick and Tullahoma Finance Director Sue Wilson presented their opening proposal on June 2nd. Of the six aldermen present that night, Kurt Glick and Busch Thoma voted no. Both took issue with the short timespan they were afforded to review the budget proposal and what they perceived to be a general lack of specificity in its accounting. 

In many ways the no-vote was symbolic, as the board must pass some form of budget ordinance by July 1 or be confined to FY25’s budget, or potentially left to the whims of the comptroller of Tennessee. Neither is something anybody wants. 

Because none of the board proposed any tangible amendments at June 2nd’s meeting, ways to cut spending, move money around, the ordinance returned on Monday totally unamended. However when it came up for discussion this time, Aldermen Kurt Glick and Matthew Bird independently proposed changes to the FY26 budget that will be explored on the third and final reading June 23.  

Bird’s proposal was a half-page write-up—Times New Roman 12. It suggested reducing the Parks and Rec’s beautification budget by $7,500, increasing the Arts Council’s by $3,000, the Historic Preservation Society’s by $1,000, and the Hands-On Science Center’s by $3,500. While budget ordinances are all-encompassing—consuming every aspect of the city’s spending—Bird’s proposal chose not to touch the problem of funding roads, which is estimated to cost the city an extra $750,000 from taxes and $939,000 from reserves. 

Glick suggested killing the tax hike by reducing spending. It was a single, double-sided sheet of bullet points, passed around the room. One side showed the city’s revenue and appropriations in its general fund from 2019 through its 2026 projections. The other offered four changes. A city’s general fund is its core body of money, but in no way does it cover all its sources of income and expenditures. 

The alderman’s counter-proposal was to remove the $750,000 general fund increase allocated for road improvements—which is presumed to come from a 15-cent property tax increase—by cutting departmental spending based on staff recommendations. It also proposed funding the $250,000 municipal building project (originally tied to the remaining 5 cents of the tax increase) through reserves instead.  

On paper, the counter-proposal sounds clean: cut $750,000 from the general fund, pay the $250,000 building project with reserves, and skip the tax hike altogether. But it doesn’t say what to cut—just that staff should figure it out, and this may be challenging by the July 1 deadline. Most of the general fund is locked up in police, fire, sanitation, and roads. Unless someone’s willing to say what gets chopped, it’s not really a plan—it’s a punt. The reserves are already being leaned on for $939,000 to balance the rest of the budget. Using them again balances the spreadsheet, sure—but it thins out the city’s margin for the next time something breaks, which it will. Things fall apart. Bird, normally among the quietest of the city’s seven aldermen, tacitly noted this. 

Looking toward Glick, he asked, “so I guess what we’d be looking at is pushing the possibility of a tax increase to another board? That’s kind of what I’m hearing. Because looking through the budget and the answers we’ve gotten, it doesn’t seem like there is much fat to trim right now.” 

“Well, there is 39, almost $40 million dollars worth of spending. So I think finding some cuts could be a possibility,” Glick replied. 

At this point Mayor Sebourn interjected, “I would put it this way, I don’t think there’s fat to speak of. What we might decide is to trade off the roads being more important than other things that are important.” 

“I know there’s not a lot of fat in the city budget, but there are things that could be delayed. I mean, we’ve delayed roads all this time.” Glick replied.

“I will say delaying doesn’t buy us a lot, right? Because next year you won’t have that, and you’ve still got the roads. So if I’m delaying, that assumes I’m going to find money to pay for it next year,” Sebourn said. 

“Well, there is growth, and we have been growing. As you can tell, revenues in the [last] seven years have gone up by 11, almost $12 million dollars.” Glick followed by expressing worry that a higher property tax rate might stifle growth.

This discussion arguably illustrated a fundamental divide between Glick and Sebourn’s fiscal logic. Glick is correct that general fund appropriations rose $11,762,974—around 42%—between 2019 and the proposed 2026 budget. But revenue rose $11,527,585 in the same period, keeping pace with about 98% of that growth. The city isn’t cooking pork belly—it’s cooking venison. If economic growth brought in more revenue, it stands to reason spending would scale with it.

The board wasn’t opposed to finding cuts—any way to save the taxpayer was welcomed. But optimism was in short supply. The timeline is tight. The alternatives, vague. And the odds of those 20 cents coming to life keep growing. The motion passed 4-1. Another no from Glick. One more meeting to go—June 23—and everyone will find out.