County Commissioners Feel Effect of Rising Property Values
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
HOUSTON COUNTY – The Houston County Commissioners Court held a regular meeting Tuesday, March 28 to receive a visit from the regional Red Cross and to analyze how the ballooning property values are affecting county business and expenditures.
All county commissioners along with Houston County Judge Jim Lovell were on hand as the meeting got under way. After prayers and pledges, the court took care of paying the bills and approving the minutes from the previous meeting.
The Messenger recently reported the hiring of Dustin Persons as the county veterans affairs officer, however, after only a few days on the job Persons decided to dedicate his time to personal matters and the court approved the hiring of one of the other finalists for the job, Mike Maiden.
The court also set the date for the Houston County picnic: Friday, April 28 at Davy Crockett Park at noon.
Queen Handy from the Red Cross spoke to commissioners and thanked them for their work with the Red Cross dealing with everything from last year’s tornado to house fires and other disasters. Handy has worked with the Red Cross for 18 years and is currently the Texas Gulf Coast Region Recovery Lead and the Disaster Program Manager. She applauded the work of the county and its many law enforcement officials and first responders who worked so well together during times of disaster. Handy told the court no one can do this work alone and thanked Houston Country Emergency Management’s Heath Murff in particular for his assistance.
The commissioners broached the subject of junk removal in the county after being informed the county has not scrapped or auctioned off unusable items since March 2020. Each commissioner said there was a backlog of unusable items in each of their precinct and agreed to find an auctioneer to help the county scrap these items and get them out of the way.
The county approved projects mandated by the state to rehabilitate structurally deficient and obsolete bridges with work to be done at several locations:
- County Road 4700 at Lee Creek
- County Road 2065 at Hurricane Bayou Relief
- County Road 2065 at Hurricane Bayou
- County Road 4050 at Harts Creek Tributary
Use of the hotel occupancy tax or “hot” tax was approved for the Piney Woods Fine Arts Association’s April 15 “Little Texas” concert at the Crockett Civic Center. Funds were also approved for the “Blues in the Pines” concert event scheduled for April 22 at the Houston County Visitors Center. Houston County Auditor Melissa Jeter and the commissioners agreed to review a quarterly report of the use of the “hot” tax to ensure events were held and promoted as promised and that the funds were generating local tourism and patronage of the hotels in Houston County.
Commissioners were provided with sobering information regarding insurance rates for the county’s properties as the rising property values will have a detrimental effect on the cost to insure those properties. Jeter told the court last year the county had properties appraised at around $29 million dollars. The current value of those properties was recently appraised at $58 million dollars. The commissioners discussed how the new appraisals coming from the state were handicapping not only county funds and expenses on insurance, but provoking the same effect on local businesses. The increase in valuations left the commissioners worried about how to cover the costs caused by the rising property values, a worry many Houston County residents know only too well.
In other business:
- The court approved the negotiation of interest rates and terms with Citizen’s National Bank regarding the county’s public funds
- The court adopted a proclamation designating March as “Red Cross Month”
- The court adopted a proclamation designating April as “County Government Month”
- The court adopted a proclamation designating April as “Fair Housing Month”
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
