Commissioner Don Dixon said Keels is an integral part of the management team and they needed to ensure they keep her.
“She was clearly under the market rate and it costs a lot of money to get a person in her position trained and understanding what it is the county commissioners expect and also to be focused on the policies in the county,” Dixon said. “She is very experienced now and very accomplished in her position. It is just a matter of being able to retain someone of her caliber.”
Moving the finance director position into the highest pay grade is in recognition of the importance of the finance director’s position, according to County Administrator Charlie Young.
“There are few things as important that the county and commissioners do on a countywide basis, one of those is finance and maybe the most critical function is the budgeting and finance component,” Young said. “It is in recognition of the duties and responsibilities of that position within the county organization.”
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Keels joined the county in 2013 after working as the finance director for the village of Woodlawn. When she took over the books the ending cash balance was $10 million for 2012, the county ended up last year with $38.3 million in the bank. The commissioners have been able to sock away $6 million in a rainy day fund and the general fund debt — that stood at $90 million in 2009 — will be entirely retired by the end of 2020. All accomplishments under Keels’ watch.
Commissioner T.C. Rogers said Keels was also instrumental in moving the county’s Moody’s bond rating up after it was downgraded in 2014.
“I believed we could get that done last year, but she and I were the only ones that thought that,” Rogers said. “Part of that is how you make your presentation, what phrases you use that you know the reporting agency wants to hear. She was very intuitive in that regard.”
The county was given a “positive outlook” assignment by Moody’s Investors Service last summer and affirmed its Aa2 rating. A good Moody’s rating means lower interest rates when the county issues bonds to pay for new capital projects like roads and refinances old loans.
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Young agreed Keels is an asset to the county.
“Tawana has done a tremendous job since her arrival working with myself as well as the commissioners in laying out plans for how to continue to manage our revenues and expense side,” Young said. “She has done a great job of interacting with the elected officials and the courts in helping to manage our costs.”
Dixon, who usually says he is “cautiously optimistic” about the county’s financial future said the county is “1,000 times better than seven or eight years ago” but the state and federal governments are making the commissioners’ ability to attain their goals a challenge.
He said they have been able cut things like water and sewer rates but they would really like to shave property taxes, unfortunately things like the loss of $3.1 million in Medicaid Managed Care Sales Tax makes that difficult.
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“Our goal is to reduce the real estate millage on property taxes and that’s part of the smaller footprint of government and funding only services that make sense and keeping a hand on the overall side of the government like personnel,” Dixon said. “That’s our goal, if they keep sending these other costs down to us and they want to raise our sales tax… that makes it very hard for us to see the pathway to reduce property taxes.”
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