Jefferson County trades scandals for basic services, commission president tells Hoover chamber
Jefferson County officials have gladly traded the trials and tribulations of past years for basic county functions such as weed cutting and road paving, County Commission President Jimmie Stephens told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce today.
Gone are the greed, corruption, sewer crisis, bankruptcy, long car tag renewal lines and controversy surrounding Cooper Green Mercy Hospital, Stephens told the roughly 175 luncheon attendees at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham — The Wynfrey Hotel.
Now, county officials can focus more energy and effort in delivering basic services and doing so in a more efficient manner, he said.
The current County Commission has been able to set aside their differences and work together for the good of the people, Stephens said. And they have re-established trust with state legislators and area mayors and restored honesty and integrity to county government, he said.
“You don’t see us being indicted. You don’t see us talking about going to jail,” Stephens said.
Where do your tax dollars go?
The commission president spent a good deal of his speech giving a rundown of what types of services the county offers.
“Everybody has limited dollars, and they worry about where their tax dollars go,” Stephens said.
Jefferson County takes in a lot of tax money, but the vast majority of it is funneled back out to other entities, including $230 million to municipalities, $213 million to boards of education and $27 million to the Jefferson County Department of Health, Stephens said.
The county’s general fund is about $141 million.
Most county governments in Alabama rely primarily on sales taxes and some property taxes for general operations, but only 19 percent of Jefferson County’s sales tax revenues go to the county’s general fund, he said.
Forty-eight percent of county sales tax revenues go to education agencies, 22 percent goes to indigent care and 10 percent goes to the health department, Stephens said.
Jefferson County formerly had an occupational tax that brought in $77 million a year for county operations, but it’s gone now, he said.
The largest expenditure for Jefferson County is public safety, and rightfully so, Stephens said. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office has a $58 million budget, he said.
“When you talk about quality of life and what’s important with your county government, public safety has to be paramount,” he said.
The sheriff’s office has 464 sworn law enforcement officers, including a tactical team, bomb squad and dive team, Stephens said. They handled nearly 70,000 calls in 2015, he said.
The sheriff’s office runs two county jails and booked almost 11,000 inmates into those jails last year, Stephens said. The jails can accommodate 1,500 people, but averaged between 1,000 and 1,100 inmates a day, he said.
There are six sheriff’s office substations, including a new one that recently opened in the McCalla/McAdory area, Stephens said. Others are in Cahaba Heights, Center Point, Forestdale, Mt. Olive and Oak Grove.
The county’s indigent care fund is almost $51 million, Stephens said. The County Commission took a lot of heat for closing the inpatient part of Cooper Green Mercy Hospital but was able to redistribute that money to the UAB Health System, St. Vincent’s Health System and Baptist Health System and meet the needs of indigent patients at those facilities, Stephens said.
“That allows you to go to the hospital in your neighborhood and receive the same care as anyone else,” he said.
Revenue Department improvements
The county’s Revenue Department handles about 1.2 million transactions a year and collects $375 million a year, Stephens said. The county issued 60,000 driver’s licenses and almost 58,000 business licenses this past year, he said.
In October, the county started allowing businesses to file sales and use taxes online and implemented a new telephone system to better handle complaints, Stephens said.
A system for online filing for business licenses is on the way, and county officials are looking into ways people could renew tags at kiosks or on their phones, Stephens said.
“If you can bank on your phone, you know that we should be able to do that with your tag renewals, and we’re working on that,” he said.
The county is transitioning from a labor-intensive, low-technology government of the 19th century and trying to skip the 20th century and bring the county into the 21st century where it belongs, Stephens said.
The county opened a satellite revenue office at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in August 2014 and this past November moved that office and expanded services to a new location in the Hoover Court shopping center. The county also is looking for a location for a similar office in north Jefferson County, Stephens said.
More services are on the way to the satellite offices. The county already has allocated money to start renewing and replacing driver’s licenses in the Hoover and Center Point satellite offices and is waiting on the state to get that accomplished, Stephens said.
Later this month, people should be able to get pistol permits at the Hoover satellite office, he said.
Jefferson County also has to maintain 1,950 miles of roads, 310 bridges, 11,500 drainage culverts, 41,500 traffic signs 434 traffic signals and 5,100 acres of roadways, Stephens said. The county plans to repave 63 miles of roads and replace 22 culverts in 2016, he said.
The sewer department has to maintain 3,151 miles of sewer lines, 187 pump stations and 81,000 manholes, and the county has to manage 3.5 million square feet of buildings, for which upkeep costs $11 million a year, Stephens said.