Monday’s meeting was the second in a series of three meetings to be held on the issue in Cookeville, Tennessee.

While the first meeting on October 27th was a “fact finding” meeting with Ben Rodgers (from the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service) presenting a number of options, this past meeting was held as a “round table” discussion.

Anyone present was welcome to contribute to the discussion.

The discussion was lively and informative with the majority of questions and debate coming from Kathleen Airhart, Putnam County's Director of Schools.

The adoption of CFMS of 1981 would mean an overhaul of the counties financial procedures through centralization.

Right now, there is no one person that is “in charge” of the county’s finances as a whole.

During the October 27th meeting, Ben Rodgers pointed out that Putnam County runs a budget of about $114 million each year and that most companies with a budget half that large need a CFO to organize their finances.

Currently, the Commission receives money from local taxes, the state, and the federal government and turns it over to the various departments throughout the county to spend.

Each department (i.e. School System, Highway System, County Operations, Sherriff, ect.) designs, implements, and spends a budget that is approved by the County Commission.

With CFMS of 1981 in place, those things would remain largely the same, the only difference would be a Finance Director that would coordinate with all of the different systems throughout the process and there could be a centralization of those various finance departments into one county finance department.

The Finance Director of CFMS of 1981 would serve in a capacity similar to that of a CFO.

The primary fiscal advantage to the county would be the centralization of purchasing through the office of the Finance Director.

The Finance Director would be able to consolidate the purchase of bulk goods in higher volume for the entire county.

County Commissioner Jim Martin has stated on multiple occasions that the county would save a lot of money through this method.

Currently, the State of TN is not forcing any Counties to adopt a new financial management system, but Ben Rodgers made it clear that audit costs for those under the General Law (that’s us) would continue to rise. Switching to the CFMS of 1981 would reduce those audit costs.

Meanwhile, Dr. Airhart reported that she had talked to the school systems of 18 different counties that had adopted this financial management system and that only 2 of them were pleased with the change.

Commissioner Martin, Executive Blaylock and others suggested that from Dr. Airhart’s report, the problem was a personnel issue for those counties and that it was not a management or a problem with the system.

They maintained that Ben Rodgers had informed them of the potential dangers and that the Commission would be cautious in their selection of a Finance Director to avoid those problems.

The meeting concluded with the suggestion that the Commission investigate the matter further by looking at the financial benefits that this new system has provided to other counties in TN that have adopted it.

If you are interested in finding out the results of this investigation, come to the final meeting on December 7th at 6 PM at the Putnam County Courthouse.