Iam often asked if the county is broke. This typically comes up when someone calls with a complaint.
The answer is no! In fact, the county will receive almost $12 million in revenue in 2019. All of that money is spoken for and budgeted for services the county provides, including road repairs.
But remember that the county provides so many services and if you have had a chance to listen to my talk show you have heard from many county department heads explaining the services provided.
This includes our fine sheriff and the profitable jail that he and his staff operate, our fine DA and his staff that are getting a lot of criminal indictments, plea agreements and good verdicts, our efficient tax office that provides so many services; our organized county clerk who keeps your records; our competent district clerk who runs our district court; our experienced veterans administrator who helps all the veterans in the county; our professional health department which provides health services in the county; our dependable emergency management services and more.
All of this is provided for every citizen by your county.
You have elected four experienced, committed, hard working commissioners. They are responsible for maintaining our roads as well as all of the major decisions of the county.
We meet almost weekly to take action on the pressing issues of running the county, including the budget. They are working hard to keep our almost 1,000 miles of county roads in good shape.
The rain we received this spring has exasperated this problem, especially in the Gause area, but they are working to catch up.
We have an opportunity to centralize the county operations into one building. All of the county departments (and more) I mentioned above are located in different old buildings in downtown Cameron, which need almost $1 million in repairs.
With the former Little River-Cameron Hospital building now vacant, we have a chance to trade some of these older buildings for the 34,000 square foot hospital building.
The hospital has a new roof and new air conditioning, but will cost about $1.5 million to convert the hospital into office space. This would provide a convenient public “One Stop Shop” for all county services much like the “One Stop” in Rockdale. This will also result in significant long-term cost savings on monthly utilities, IT services and so on.
While the offices of the district judge and county Judge will remain in our historic courthouse, this will provide an opportunity to revitalize downtown Cameron with new businesses and further our goals of economic development.
So, we are not broke. We are moving Milam forward and planning for the future. We continue to provide all the services the county has historically provided. All without any new taxes.
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