The Gilmer County Board of Commissioners recognized Post 1 Commissioner Will Beattie during a special called meeting on Friday, December 21st. Beattie was first elected in 2008 and served as commissioner from 2009-2012. Beattie decided not to run again as commissioner for a second term and will be replaced by Randy Bell.

“I would like to thank everybody that supported me,”

Beattie said in the meeting,

“I hope that I gained everyone in feeling that I treated you professionally and respectfully and that I was at least in my heart and my mind trying to make decisions that I felt were the right decisions to make for everybody.”

Commission Chair J.C. Sanford also recognized Beattie in the meeting for his commitment to the county not to raise taxes while he was in office. Although the county implemented a one dollar garbage fee to substitute for garbage costs and a bill for bond payment, Sanford said he felt the county was successful in limitting tax increases.

“Before Will and I came on board–the previous four years to that– taxes in Gilmer County hiked just a few percentage points, doubling in the those four years. And in the four years that Will and I have served, the actual increase in taxes is a little under three percent for three years,”

Sanford said.

Later in the meeting, Beattie, said he was proud to sign a check for the county’s Tax Anticipated Note (TAN) before the special called meeting, noting an almost three million dollars reduction since he first joined the board in 2009. When he first started as commissioner, he explained, the county’s annual borrowing was over five million dollars, and this year’s TAN was less than three million.

“That’s the constitutional officers having to reduce their budgets–That’s the board of commissioners. It has been a group effort. There is still some debt that needs to come down and a whole lot of capital debt that’s going to have to be payed off over the years, but I really think everybody that works in this county is pulling in the same direction no matter what the citizens think,”

Beattie said.