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September 26, 2009

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Willingham officially sworn in as Revenue Commissioner, cuts approx. $250,000 from budget

By Patrick McCreless The Cullman Times

CULLMAN — Though Barry Willingham was officially sworn into his first term as Cullman County revenue commissioner Friday, he has already been making sweeping changes to his department for months.

“Overall customer service is what our goal is,” Willingham said. “My goal is to have them here for the shortest amount of time to do their business.”

Judge Greg Nicholas swore Willingham into his first term, approximately five months after he took over the unexpired term of Kay D. Williams-Smith.

Willingham (R) soundly defeated Williams-Smith (D) in the election for revenue commissioner last year with 56 percent of the vote and was scheduled to officially take over the position on Oct. 1. However, Williams-Smith resigned in April due to health problems.

To improve on customer service, Willingham has focused on cross-training his employees.

“There are not just ladies collecting property taxes and some that assess property taxes,” Willingham said. “Now we have ladies doing both. And anybody in the land department is able to collect taxes ... and some ladies in land can do car tags.”

With the cross training, Willingham said long lines should rarely be a problem.

“The biggest comments I’ve gotten from people is we’ve got the department stream-lined,” Willingham said.

Along with training, Willingham said he has cut approximately $250,000, in what he deemed unnecessary spending, from his budget. Those funds have since been dispersed into the county’s general fund.

“A lot of it was just a little bit of bloat in line items,” he said. “We still need to make some more cuts.”

Early on in his administration, Willingham cut the department’s travel budget from $30,000 to $20,000.

“There were too many trips to too many conferences that weren’t needed,” Willingham said.

Willingham said he cut $200,000 from his reappraisal budget.

“That money had been put in for extra vehicles and travel,” he said.

Willingham has also rearranged personnel at the revenue commission’s satellite offices in Dodge City and Baileyton.

“It used to be, there were two people in one office and four in another,” Willingham said. “Now I’ve got two in each.”

He added that he would send an extra employee to each office in October to handle the extra business in property tax collection.

“And with our cross training, we can do that without having to hire extra staff,” Willingham said.

 

‰ Patrick McCreless can be reached by e-mail at patrickm@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.

 

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