In Monday night’s Commission Planning Meeting, Probate Judge and County Commission Chairman, Tim Burgess, went over an item on the agenda that could save time for local residents at the tag office. “We’ve had issues in the past, I guess it’s been about the last couple of years, that our volume has increased in our tag office. The budget being the way it is, we can’t really hire people for it and we don’t have space.” Judge Burgess said that himself and Cherokee County Revenue Commissioner, Dustin St. Clair have talked about this very issue and how a lot of Judges of Probate have the tag office in their county and a lot of revenue commissioners have the tag office in their county. “If we put the tag office under the Revenue Commissioners authority, then we are able to utilize more clerks for the public and that’s our main goal, to be able to serve the public better and use our employees in a more efficient manner.”
Judge Burgess went on to state that Commissioner St. Clair has a lot more space on his side of the building and should be able to come up with a larger area to hold the general public on that side. “Not only that, we talked last time about the way that the county benefits from that budget change, in that he prorates his budget. The tag office, the way it operates now, it operates in the general fund. So, he would be funding that budget verses it being funded out of the general fund. This would allow for those funds to be used in other places.”
Commissioner St. Clair is not asking for any increase to do this. “We feel this would benefit the citizens; virtually having more people to wait on the public without having to hire anyone.” said Burgess.
Commissioner St. Clair noted, “The key point is being able to serve the public better. Instead of having people stand outside and Judge Burgess setting up tents outside just to keep people out of the sun, we both got together and agreed this is one way that maybe we can alleviate some of that wait time.”
Judge Burgess also stated that in order to do this, they would have to have legislation drawn up. “We are anticipating that there will be a special session sometime maybe in September or October.”
In tonight’s regular meeting, the resolution was approved by the commission.
For more items discussed in tonight’s meeting, click here.
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