Loudon County

If you own residential property in Loudon County you have just had your property taxes increased 16.4%.  This was an unwelcome surprise to 99 percent of county residents.

The increase is to fund $115 million for multiple school building projects:  a new $94 million middle/high school on the north end of the county and other school construction projects.   At several public meetings a large number of residents spoke up and asked the leadership in Loudon County to delay raising our taxes until feasibility, needs analysis, and traffic studies were done.  It should not have been too much to ask that these projects be vetted and analyzed by professionals to determine what is needed versus “wanted” and what size the needed projects should be. Six commissioners voted to not have professional studies completed; and, then followed that vote with the vote to raise the tax rate 25 cents per $100 of assessed value.

The County Commission should have required the Board of Education prioritize the school projects; and, then they should have voted on each project individually as a stand-alone project. They did not do that. Instead, all projects were bundled and therefore it took only one “up or down” vote on the new tax rate increase to pay for all of them… the bad along with the good.  That means we are now going to fund unnecessary and low priority projects along with truly needed ones.  This approach was very costly to the taxpayers.  

Additionally, schools in our county could be feeling the impact very soon of two things.

Concord Baptist Church is planning to put a new high school, that has been well thought out and designed, in the north end of Loudon County only three miles from the proposed new county middle/high school (to be built next to the First Baptist Church in Lenoir City by Home Depot). The Concord Baptist’s new school could obviously take students away from the new county middle/high school.  The County’s and Lenoir City’s Planning Boards and ultimately Loudon County Commission may prevent the church from building their new school by refusing to approve the re-zoning needed.  Their high school would be built at zero cost to the taxpayers of Loudon County.

Another issue that was not considered, though it was brought up in the meeting before the vote, is that Governor Lee will be proposing vouchers in the next legislative session, again.  If this legislation passes it could enable parents to send children to private schools, thus reducing the number of students in public schools.  Why are we raising taxes, buying bonds and building new schools when the overall impact of these two items is still unknown?   We should be waiting for the dust to settle.