Updated 10/21/19

Giles County Executive Melissa Greene presented her first State of the County address to the Giles County Commission during today’s monthly commission meeting.

Greene told commissioners she plans to present a State of the County each year.

The State of the County address is included here as it was presented by Greene.

Good morning and welcome to the State of the County address. I’m Melissa Greene, your County Executive. I’m honored today to have this opportunity to present what we’ve accomplished as a County over the past year. This first 12 months for me personally have come with a large learning curve, but I could not be more proud of the employees in this County that I get the honor to work beside every day. To say Giles County is blessed would be an understatement. We have some of the most dedicated employees that strive to serve you, the citizens, the best they can every single day.

One of the keys to an effective government is to understand that government works for the people and not the other way around. With that in mind, transparency in government is one of the items we’ve worked hard to improve. This State of the County is a result of wanting to increase transparency to you, and offer you an opportunity to hear how your tax dollars are being spent.

First, the County is growing. We’ve had four new subdivision developments presented to the Planning Commission for approval. This is a good sign that our economy is continuing to grow. Our unemployment rate has continued to remain low for the past year. This year we’ve hired a new Economic Development Director, David Hamilton, who brings years of experience in both industrial and retail recruitment.

Exit 14 as well as our other interstate exits are being studied and actively marketed to potential developers. Giles County has four interstate exits which could all provide substantial tax revenue by being further developed. This year we have started a citizens committee to work on overcoming obstacles and promoting development for each of these exits.

Second, our County Commission passed a balanced budget this year with no property tax increase. This budget included pay raises for all of our teachers in the County as well as increasing the maintenance of effort for the school system for the first time in 11 years. The purpose of the increase to the maintenance of effort was to go towards a new salary schedule for teachers to make Giles County more competitive with our surrounding Counties to retain and attract the best of the best in teachers. This increase of the maintenance of effort was possible because the City of Pulaski, the Giles County Board of Education and the Giles County Commission all three worked together to make it happen.

Within this approved budget, there were two new part-time positions created for the County: a grant writer and an IT professional. Additionally, the County Commission was able to move money around to a capital projects fund which will allow funds to grow in that account for larger projects in our future. Due to the Commission being conservative with spending over the past few years, the general fund balance has increased to approximately $11 million.

This year’s budget also includes a few one-time expenditures. The addition of a new convenience center in Minor Hill is included. This center opened this month. This convenience center is similar to the ones in Bodenham, Lynnville and at the Ag Park. It takes household trash as well as recyclable materials.

Another one-time expense is the addition of a new animal shelter building. This year we have restructured the animal shelter department and remodeled the existing building. $100,000 has been included in the budget to build a new shelter for dogs while using the existing building for both puppies and cats. The City of Pulaski has partnered with us to help with this restructuring of this department. With the addition of Morgan Sutton as our newly hired Animal Shelter Manager and Deputy Randy Boaz as our Animal Control Officer, we have worked to increase our response rate to calls for stray dogs and increase our adoption rate. Over the past year we’ve seen an increase in our adoption rate from approximately 30% to nearly 80%.

A third one-time expense in this year’s budget is approximately $90,000 for an American’s with Disabilities Act self-assessment. The Federal government has mandated that all local governments do a self-assessment and evaluation of all owned properties to ensure they meet ADA guidelines. We will complete this study by December of 2019, and then we are required to begin repairing any deficiencies we discovered during this study. This will be a multi-year project of continuous improvements to get all County facilities up to and exceeding all ADA guidelines.

Besides the budget, our Giles County Commissioners have made other changes throughout the past year. First, they have changed the meeting dates from every other month to every month due to the amount of business that comes before them and to ensure no deadlines are missed for projects such as grant applications. Second, we are having strategic planning sessions for the County. The Commission has met three times for strategic planning. The first meeting assessed a SWOT analysis for the County identifying: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The second meeting got more detailed and began conversations about each County department and what goals the commissioners had for each department. The third meeting was a planning meeting between the County Commission and the Board of Education to begin a dialogue on the needs of the County school system’s infrastructure. These strategic planning meetings are creating conversations about the conditions of the County now, but also about the planning needs for the future. The goal of the meetings is to come away with a “plan” for the 5, 10- and 20-year future of Giles County.

To sum up this year, it would be the year of progress. Merriam-Webster defines progress as a gradual betterment. Our County departments, the budget and community projects have all made progress this year. But one of the biggest areas of progress is the sense of community and cooperation that has developed due to several groups working together to achieve these goals. In closing, I want to personally thank the Giles County Commissioners, the Giles County School Board, the Cities of Pulaski, Minor Hill, Elkton, Ardmore, and Lynnville, and every Giles County employee and elected official for all of their work individually and collectively to make this such a successful year. We know we still have more challenges and projects ahead of us, but with the continued efforts of this community, we’ll get these accomplished too. Thank you for your support and here’s to the next 12 months continuing the progress of these first 12.