Blount Co. Commission will be voting on the new budget in June. Commissioner Walker recently asked for input at his blog regarding the top five areas where you'd like to see increased spending and the top five areas you'd like to see decreased or eliminated.

Everybody likes to gripe about taxes, and lots of folks, especially in Blount County, want lower taxes and less government. When you actually look at the budget, though, it's easy to see lots of areas where it would be nice to spend more and hard to find areas to cut.

It's even harder looking at it from 50,000 feet without knowing the details on some of these programs. It's a tough job to figure all this out every year (maybe a two-year budget cycle would be good?), regardless of your politics. I don't envy our elected officials and department heads.

Anyway, off the top of my head here are my priorities, better late than never...

Except for two Commissioners (Walker and Pitts-Reeves), I can't find nary a contact email address for any public officials on the Blount Co. website.

Alcoa and Maryville both have email addresses for several public officials, and Maryville has a general contact form you can submit. Both also have email contacts for public information officers, who can route your requests/questions to the appropriate department.

Seems like Blount Co. should have at least one general email address. Ideally, all departments and elected officials would have one for contacting their respective offices.

UPDATE: A reader advises that there is a County Commission contact form here. Thanks!

The Maryville Daily Times files reports on the budget committee meeting. It's a no new taxes budget, but will use $3 million from reserves for schools.

The issue of expanding the jail to bring in more revenue for housing federal prisoners was discussed, and it was noted that the county would need a long-term commitment from the federal government to send federal prisoners. The revenue would help pay for expansion to relieve crowding at the jail.

I'm sure this has been explained, but how does bringing in more prisoners help relieve overcrowding? If the jail didn't house federal prisoners, would there be an overcrowding problem? How many federal prisoners are in the jail? Maybe the numbers work out, I just don't recall seeing them.

At any rate, I personally don't think Blount Co. ought to be getting into the prison business. Go take a drive around Morgan Co. some time.

In related news, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports on the county commission workshop last night. Property tax revenues are expected to be up 4% due to new development and commercial rezoning. There was also talk of disbanding the Ethics Committee, because the new state law requiring a policy doesn't require a committee to oversee enforcement. Instead of a committee, complaints would be taken up by the full commission.