County employees will be getting a pay raise when the new fiscal year begins on July 1 after the Russell County Fiscal Court approved a 2.9 percent “cost of living” increase at its regular monthly meeting a week ago Monday night.

Third District Magistrate Ronald Johnson said at the meeting that it had been two years since county employees had been given any such raise. The increase in pay does not include any elected officials.

County leaders also voted to give pay increases to deputy jailers at the Russell County Detention Center upon a recommendation by Jailer Bobby Dunbar.

Supervisors and anyone else making $9 an hour will go to $9.50 an hour, full-time employees making $8.50 will go to $9 an hour, part-time will go from $8 per hour to $8.50 per hour. The new starting rate for full time employees will be $8.50 an hour with a .50 cent increase after 60 days or whenever they complete their first round of mandatory training.

“It takes a special person to work at the detention center, I’ll just be honest with you guys,” Dunbar told the court. The court also approved and accepted the jail budget for 2012.

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The much ballyhooed and controversial “boat tax” issue was again at the forefront of the March meeting of the Russell County Fiscal Court last Monday night as several folks, including a compliance officer from the Department of Revenue’s Finance and Administration Cabinet, spoke on the topic.

The issue, which is out of the fiscal court’s hands and is not a county matter, is being handled by the state Department of Revenue and William Lawson with the finance and administration cabinet said the auditor of public accounts, back in 2006, told the Department of Revenue they weren’t doing a very good job in documenting watercraft, among other things.

A rarely enforced state law allows counties to collect property taxes on houseboats and other watercraft which are docked or stored locally for more than 60 days but some magistrates have expressed concern at recent meetings that enforcement of the tax would encourage vessel owners to relocate to a dock or marina outside of Russell County.

“One of the problems is the state portion on documented watercraft is only a cent and a half where if it is on a stickered boat or a Kentucky boat it is 45 cents, so that is a huge difference for the state. That’s no reason for us not to do an adequate compliance program. In 2011 in Russell County we had 184 timely returns which ended up with an assessed value of $21,500,000,” Lawson said. “At the same time the stickered boats in Russell County for 2011, there were 3,889 and the assessed value of $19,980,000.

Lawson said his cabinet has been in Russell County and several other surrounding counties conducting marine surveys where representatives walk the docks and write down names of the vessels and whether or not the stickers are expired. If it is an out of state boat that has been permanently docked in Kentucky then we write that down, too.”

He said, based upon the 184 boats from 2011 at $21 million, that’s an assessed average value of $116,000.

“So far this year we’ve found 150 additional boats which will, using the $116,000, that will generate another $17 million worth of assessed value in the county,” Lawson told the court.

He said there have been around 100 boats identified by name in Russell County but the cabinet has been unable to find the boats documented with the U.S. Coast Guard database, which is either an error on their part or the vessels have never been documented with the Coast Guard.

“We’ve also identified 80 plus boats at State Dock which are not included in the above totals,” Lawson said. He added that the tax rate in Russell County was not exorbitant.

“In Russell County it just means that the school board and all of the other jurisdictions have elected to assess documented watercraft,” he said. Lawson also said the rate here was not “1,000 times higher” than some other nearby counties.

“The Department of Revenue has done a poor job (in enforcing the boat tax) but we’re trying to catch up,” he said. “The limitation we’ve had is lack of personnel, but we eventually will get them all.”

He said he had a problem with folks who enjoy the fruits of hard work in this county by using the lake and surrounding areas, but don’t want to pay property taxes.

Lawson told the court he didn’t believe, despite a higher tax rate, that slip renters would leave Russell County marinas and docks and head up the lake to Pulaski County docks, where the rate is lower.

“People are creatures of habit and it is hard to drive them away,” he said. State Dock President Bill Jasper and Russell County Tourism’s Director of Marketing John Carter disagreed with Lawson’s view.

Carter said he was worried about Lake Cumberland’s many out of state tourists leaving the lake and staying in their home state or at least move to other docks on the lake in counties where the “boat tax” is lower.

“If we run the tourists to the other counties and the other states what else are we going to have other than a beautiful lake,” Carter said. “I bet you 25 to 30 percent of them will (leave)…taxation is the one thing that will drive people away from here.”

Jasper said State Dock alone contributed to the state between sales tax, concession and taxes to the county a total of $889,000 last year. Of that, $74,000 was in documented vessel tax while $10,000 was for registered vessels.

“The problem I have is the issue of taxing our tourists,” Jasper said. “These folks are from elsewhere and they can go elsewhere.”

Jasper said placing the burden of a tax on tourists in hopes that it would help educate someone else’s child was not right.

“Another issue is they’re only targeting commercial marinas,” he said. “They’re not looking at storage facilities or at private marinas. There is an inequity there and inequity is the biggest problem.”

Jasper also had an issue with Lawson saying the tax rate was not that big of a deal here. Jasper gave the example of it costing $1,600 more if your boat is docked in Russell County rather than at Lee’s Ford Marina in Pulaski County.

“If you were a tourist coming here would you appreciate someone trying to take $2,200 out of your pocket on a $200,000 boat and where would you go,” Jasper said. “This could be devastating to our business. If I’m scared about it I hope you all would be,” he told the court.

Chris Girdler, deputy district director with Congressman Hal Rogers office, was also at the meeting and said to be bringing up an issue like that at this time was a counter productive move.

For the greatest recession since the Great Depression to be going on, something of this nature right now is simply bad timing he told the group.

Leland True, a boat owner and president of Clifty Creek Dock Owner’s Association, who has been an advocate for collecting these taxes at several previous fiscal court meetings, said he believed there are anywhere between 150 and 200 undocumented boats on the lake for every documented one and it was time these fees were finally collected.

With the matter out of the fiscal courts hands, all the magistrates and Judge/Executive Gary Roberts could do was listen as the controversial issue was dissected once more.

Boat owners who have not paid the boat tax face a 10 percent penalty if they voluntarily file their return with the state or a 20 percent penalty if they don’t, according to Lawson.

The Department of Revenue has been waiving two of the five years owed and could possibly waive the full five year total if extraordinary services have prevented payment.