Ware County’s Commission held its first public hearing with the presentation of the proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget Wednesday morning.
Three of the five commissioners were in attendance as Senior Accounting Supervisor Beverly York presented the budget. Commissioners Barry Cox, Leonard Burse and Jon Tindall presided over the Public Hearing. Chairman Elmer Thrift and Commissioner Timmy Lucas were not present.
The commission will gather Thursday, June 26 at 3:30 p.m., to adopt the nearly $50.6 million proposed budget, and increase of $1,515,575. There is a combined $11,724,218m in the SPLOST (Special Local Option Sales Tax) 2023 Fund, CP F/Public Roads (Community Project Funding) and TSPLOST (Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) 2018 Fund aiding the funding.
The FY25 General Fund budget was $31,278,896 with FY26 proposed at $31,896,653 for a $617,757 (2.06 percent) increase. The county is currently nearly $7m over budget through May with expenses reaching nearly $38.8m and a shortfall of approximately $4m in revenue. The end of the fiscal year is June 30.
York explained the county’s shortfall is because FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has not issued funds for the aftermath cleanup of Hurricane Helene in September 2024.
“We will be 12 percent under budget if we get the FEMA money,” she said.
The county has received $4,655,483.11 in LOST (Local Options Sales Tax), an increase of 5.3% over FY24 in the same 10-month time frame with payments for May and June not received.
Approximately $2,493,017.30 of DOT (Department of Transportation) funds for LMIG (Local Maintenance & Improvement Grant) projects has been received with approximately $2,386,127.99 spent on resurfacing and road improvements through May 31.
The county has received $17,109,960.17 in SPLOST funding through May 2025 with $l2m being set aside for the Albany Avenue Overpass project with the City of Waycross. Approximately $35,479 has been spent on engineering.
Other county projects include Economic Development, Public Safety Facilities/Equipment, Recreation/ Parks, IT Equipment/Software, and Roads, Drainage and Equipment.
Ware County has received $5,777.72 through May for the TSPLOST 2018 (single county) funds. The county, and the City of Waycross, have paid $5111 to GDOT for the US 1 Business overpass/bridge over CSX railway. The county stills has approximately $446,165 remaining for approved county projects.
The 10-year Regional TSPLOST funding through May is $5,478,365 with the county receiving approximately $122,000 per month — an increase from earlier payments of $88,000 a month. Ware County/City of Waycross contributed approximately $6.6111 per year.
“I don’t like this,” stated Tindall. “It was better when it was single county. We’ve put in $55 million and have received $5 million. I would like to see the activity prior to 2018 and since. We’re only seeing a bridge being built and we’re sharing that with Pierce County.”
Commissioner Burse was in agreement of seeing an activity report.
Some of the negative effects that may impact the FY26 budget, according to Beverly, are the possibility of revenues falling, items needed to operate are more expensive, how costly will the tariffs be, training and seminars are increasing yearly, increased expenses for cleaning, higher costs for utilities, the purchasing of non-essential items may be cut, and quality employee retention.
York explained 80% of the revenue for operations will come from property taxes, 13% from charges for services, 3% from intergovernmental revenue, 2% for fines and forfeitures and 1% from licenses and permits.
Public Safety accounts for almost half of the proposed budget at $15,865,134 million, including allocations for the Ware County Jail, Sheriff s Office, emergency medical service and fire department. The General Government is 16% (85,193,839), the Judicial Court system is 13% (4,056,044), Public Works is 9% ($3,043,881), Culture and Recreation is 6% ($1,782,408), Health and Welfare 3% ($889,192), Emergency telephone is 2%
($595,221), and Housing and Development is 1% ($392,675).
Also included is a 3% Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA).
“We can take a look back at this about mid-year and see what we can do,” said Commissioner Cox.4 The county’s expenses include $835,628 to other agencies with DFACS (Department of Family & Children Services) receiving $292,935, Ware County Board of Health receiving $170,576 and the Waycross-Ware County Development Authority receiving $150,00 topping the 13-agency list.
“The Development Authority wants to increase their budget to $200,000,” said County Manager James Shubert.
“Maybe we can take baby steps,” said Commissioner Burse. “If we don’t have a strong economic development we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.”
