This page documents, line by line, how the simulator turns the FY2025 audited financials, the FY2026 budget, and the FY2027 budget adopted June 29, 2026 into the numbers you see on screen — every formula, every assumption, and where each starting figure comes from. Nothing here is hidden in the tool's code; this is that code, in plain English.
The model starts from figures pulled directly from primary sources, not estimates created for this tool. Where a figure had to be backed into rather than read directly off a document, that's noted.
| Figure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Population | 58,580 | Moody's FY2024 estimate |
| General Fund payroll (base) | $18,500,000 | FY2025 baseline |
| Employee headcount | 408 | TCRS-reported, FY2025 |
| General Fund total revenue | $28,791,908 | FY2025 AFR (Exhibit C-3), audited |
| General Fund total expenditures | $27,545,276 | FY2025 AFR (Exhibit C-3), audited |
| GF property tax (general purposes) | $13,552,599 | FY2025 AFR — the ~56.9% GF share of the county-wide levy |
| General Fund balance, 6/30/2025 | $16,063,967 | FY2025 AFR (Exhibit C-3); ~55.8% reserve ratio |
| Unassigned fund balance | $7,900,000 | Moody's: unassigned GF balance, 27.1% |
| Education Debt Service Fund balance | $10,721,706 | FY2025 AFR (Exhibit C-3), separate fund; the bulk restricted for debt service |
| School bond principal | $60,000,000 | Rural School Bonds, Series 2026 — actual Notice of Sale maturity schedule, payable each June 1, 2027–2051 |
| Certified Tax Rate | $1.1034 / $100 AV | Assessor Mike Campbell, post-reappraisal |
| Adopted FY2027 tax rate | $1.0944 / $100 AV (outside LC) · $0.8602 (inside) | Tax Levy Resolution adopted by the Commission June 29, 2026 — below the Certified Tax Rate, a real cut relative to strict revenue-neutrality. The inside/outside difference is the Education Debt Service levy, applied only outside Lenoir City. |
| Adopted Ed Debt Service levy | $0.2342 / $100 AV | Same resolution — the dedicated school-debt slice, outside Lenoir City only. Full adopted distribution: General 0.3617 · GP School 0.4347 · Ed Debt Svc 0.2342 · Gen Debt Svc 0.0239 · Highway 0.0153 · Ed Capital 0.0126 · Libraries 0.0087 · Hwy Capital 0.0033. |
| FY2027 GF appropriations | $33,230,550 | Appropriations Resolution adopted June 29, 2026 (legal spending ceilings, budgetary basis) — loadable onto the FY27 tab from the simulator's Expenditures tab |
| FY2026 final amended GF budget | rev $29,493,793 · exp $31,636,473 | Year-end amendment resolution, June 29, 2026 — projected available fund balance $11,915,219 at 6/30/2026 (budgetary basis) |
| Assessed value base | ~$2.1747B | Back-calculated to hold FY25-verified GF revenue consistent at the $1.0944 rate — this one figure is an estimate, not yet pulled from an official document. The adopted resolutions now allow rough cross-checks (e.g., the Highway Fund expects ~$796,347 from its $0.0153 slice), and they don't reconcile cleanly with this placeholder — update when the certified tax aggregate is public. |
Every department expenditure line (Sheriff, Jail, General Government, Highways, etc.) and every revenue line (Local Property Tax, State Revenue, Sales Tax, etc.) is seeded at its FY2025 actual dollar figure. Those baselines are what every later year's growth is measured against.
The single most important structural decision in this model: the General Fund and the Education Debt Service Fund never touch. The $60M school bond is paid from its own dedicated levy on property outside Lenoir City — it is never added to General Fund expenditures, and General Fund surplus or deficit never affects the school debt calculation.
Covers Sheriff, Jail, Fire, EMS, General Government, Finance, Courts, Health, Highways, the county's contribution to Education, E-911, and the rest of day-to-day county operations. Funded by property tax, fees, state/federal revenue, sales tax, hotel/motel tax, and the adequate facilities tax.
Exists for one purpose: paying down the $60M school bond. Funded by its own dedicated levy on assessed value outside Lenoir City. Tracked on a separate 25-year cashflow (2027–2051), independent of the 5-year General Fund projection.
The model runs FY26 through FY30 as a single chain, not five independent snapshots. Clicking a year tab doesn't recalculate that year in isolation — it shows you that link in a chain that starts at FY26 and carries every prior year's results forward.
Practically: if you never touch FY27–FY30 at all, the model assumes a true no-new-spending, no-new-revenue baseline — every line simply repeats its FY26 dollar amount for four more years, since the default growth rate on every line is 0%.
This is the literal logic for every department or revenue line, every year:
IF this is FY26, OR the user explicitly set this line this year:
line amount = the value the user entered (or FY26 baseline, for FY26)
ELSE:
line amount = (prior year's actual amount) × (1 + growth rate % / 100)
This is the same rule for both the expenditure grid and the revenue grid. The only revenue line that works differently is Local Property Tax, described in Section 6.
The Expenditures tab includes a one-click loader that seeds the FY27 tab with the adopted FY2027 General Fund appropriations ($33,230,550, Appropriations Resolution passed June 29, 2026). The resolution's budgetary departments are rolled up into the simulator's nine audit-function lines using the TN CTAS account series — the same classification the audit uses:
| Function line (CTAS series) | Adopted FY2027 | Largest components |
|---|---|---|
| Public Safety (54xxx) | $16,700,323 | Sheriff $8,585,897 · Jail $6,140,159 · Rural Fire $776,500 · Other PS/E-911 $702,111 |
| General Government (51xxx) | $5,330,776 | County Buildings $1,783,210 · Election $587,668 · Register $506,134 · Legal $490,000 |
| Finance (52xxx) | $4,086,888 | County Clerk $1,180,582 · Accounting & Budgeting $889,763 · Assessor $871,806 |
| Administration of Justice (53xxx) | $3,331,528 | General Sessions $1,033,956 · GS Judge $637,050 · Circuit $541,198 |
| Other Operations (58xxx + 99100) | $1,654,555 | Misc $633,000 · Employee Benefits $388,074 · Econ/Ind $183,106 · Veterans $157,625 · includes the $87,000 Transfers to Other Funds so the nine lines sum exactly to the adopted total |
| Public Health & Welfare (55xxx) | $1,387,520 | Other Local Health/DGA $744,200 · Animal Control $597,169 |
| Social, Cultural & Rec (56xxx) | $374,508 | Senior Citizens Assistance |
| Agriculture & Natural Resources (57xxx) | $364,452 | Ag Extension $298,805 · Soil Conservation $57,647 |
| Capital Outlay (Donated) | $0 | A GAAP recognition of donated assets in the audit — never appropriated, so zero on a budgetary basis |
| Total | $33,230,550 | Reconciles to the adopted resolution to the dollar |
Three honesty rules govern the loader. First, these are appropriations — legal spending ceilings on a budgetary basis, not projections of actuals; audited actuals typically come in below them (FY2026's original budget projected a $5.31M fund-balance draw that year-end amendments cut to $2.14M). Second, the adopted $2,080 full-time COLA is already inside those department dollars, so loading zeroes the FY27 raise knob — otherwise the raise would be counted twice. Third, the loader touches the expenditure side only: the adopted FY2027 estimated-revenue schedule was not in the June 29 packet, so revenue lines stay at the audited FY2025 baseline until it can be sourced — comparing adopted ceilings against audited revenue overstates any deficit, and the tool says so rather than hiding it.
Department lines (Sheriff, Jail, etc.) already include their FY2025 salary costs baked in. What the model adds on top is the gap between the original FY26 payroll base and wherever payroll has grown to by the year you're viewing — so this section is purely about modeling raises and new hires on top of the baseline.
new payroll base = prior year's payroll base × (1 + this year's raise % / 100)
cumulative uplift = new payroll base − original FY26 base
existing-staff cost added = cumulative uplift × (1 + benefits % / 100)
FY26 carries a 4.5% raise by default — modeled as an existing, already-committed obligation, not a forward assumption. FY27–FY30 default to 0% (no raise) until a year is explicitly adjusted. The adopted FY2027 raise (June 29, 2026) is a flat $2,080 COLA for full-time employees and 5% for regular part-time; because it is already embedded in the adopted FY2027 appropriation dollars, the FY27 Adopted loader sets the FY27 raise knob to 0 rather than double-counting it.
average fully-loaded salary = FY26 base payroll ÷ 408 employees
cost per new hire = average salary × (1 + this year's raise %) × (1 + this year's benefits %)
new hires cost = cumulative hires-to-date × cost per new hire
Headcount is cumulative — a hire added in FY27 keeps costing money through FY30. A negative new-hires number models attrition and reduces the cumulative count the same way.
assessed value = AV base × (1 + AV growth % / 100)
property tax revenue = assessed value × (tax rate / 100)
The simulator can instead be switched to a manual mode where Local Property Tax is entered directly as a dollar figure or percent change, like any other revenue line — in that mode the rate × AV calculator is bypassed entirely.
The $60M bond has a real, fixed maturity schedule — annual principal payments from 2027 through 2051, set in the actual Notice of Sale. The model can compute debt service two ways:
for each year 2027–2051:
interest = remaining balance × interest rate
debt service = that year's scheduled principal + interest
remaining balance −= that year's principal
"Manual mode" lets the figure be overridden with a flat user-entered debt service number instead of the calculated schedule, for testing alternative assumptions.
Level (default): rate covers the AVERAGE annual debt service
→ fund stays near its starting cushion
Peak: rate covers the single WORST year, held flat
→ fund accumulates a large surplus (conservative bound)
Match: rate floats to each year's exact payment
→ fund stays flat by construction
Earlier versions sized the levy only to the peak year. The tool now defaults to Level (average), which is more realistic and surfaces whether the front-loaded early payment years draw the cushion down before it recovers.
taxable base outside Lenoir City = assessed value × 0.92
school levy rate = target debt service ÷ (taxable base outside LC / 100)
The bond's GOULT pledge applies to property outside Lenoir City, hence the 0.92 factor excluding the city's share of assessed value. The 0.92 share is an estimate, pending the certified city/county assessed-value split.
Separately from the 5-year General Fund projection, the model runs a year-by-year cashflow for the Education Debt Service Fund itself, starting from its actual $10,700,710 balance, checking whether the dedicated levy keeps pace with the bond payment schedule or whether the fund has to be drawn down to cover gaps.
levy collected = taxable base × (adopted levy rate / 100)
net cashflow = levy collected − that year's debt service
fund balance = prior fund balance + net cashflow
taxable base grows each year by the user's AV growth assumption (default: flat)
This tab flags the year of minimum fund balance, whether the balance ever goes negative, whether the levy over-collects (the fund balloons because the rate is set higher than the debt actually needs), and the single peak debt-service year — all read directly off this 25-year run, not estimated.
reserve ratio = projected ending fund balance ÷ projected revenue, for the year being viewed
10–15% is treated as the conventional healthy-reserve threshold. The alert banner above the gauge changes based on this same ratio and the year's surplus/deficit:
| Condition | Banner |
|---|---|
| Deficit greater than 50% of the starting fund balance, in one year | Critical — red |
| Any deficit | Caution — amber |
| Surplus, but reserve ratio below 12% | Note — amber |
| Surplus and reserve ratio at or above 12% | Healthy — green |
own-source local taxes = property tax + local sales tax
+ hotel/motel tax + adequate facilities tax
per-capita tax burden = own-source local taxes ÷ 58,580 residents
Deliberately excludes state and federal aid and service fees — those are not a tax burden on county residents. This is the honest "what locals actually pay per person" figure, not total revenue per person.
The default "no new spending" baseline is a real constraint built into the code, not just a label:
FY27 through FY30 carry zero assumed raises, department growth, new hires, or revenue growth by default. Every line simply repeats its prior year's dollar figure until a user explicitly changes it.
FY26's 4.5% raise is the single built-in exception, modeled as an already-committed obligation rather than a forward projection.
The assessed value base (~$2.1747B) is back-calculated to match verified FY25 revenue at the new rate — it is the one core figure not yet pulled from an official document, and is labeled as an estimate throughout. The adopted resolutions now allow rough cross-checks that don't reconcile cleanly with it; it stays flagged until the certified tax aggregate is public.
The school debt levy rate is held flat once set, rather than auto-adjusting each year — consistent with how property tax rates actually work, but a simplifying assumption nonetheless.
The 25-year school cashflow uses Year-1 assessed-value growth assumptions as the levy base for the entire 25-year run, since the bond's schedule runs far past the 5-year General Fund planning window.
Fund classification (reconciled). The baselines now tie to the FY2025 audited General Fund (AFR Exhibit C-3): revenue $28,791,908, expenditures $27,545,276. Highways/Public Works ($3.97M) and the Education Debt Service Fund are shown separately and are not in these totals — consistent with Tennessee uniform accounting, where they are separate funds with their own dedicated revenue.
Property-tax allocation. The General Fund receives only its general-purpose share (~56.9% per the FY2025 audit) of the county-wide property-tax levy; the audited GF property tax is $13,552,599. The rest of the levy funds schools, debt service, highways, and the library. The Rate × AV calculator shows that full derivation. Open reconciliation item: the adopted FY2027 distribution gives the General fund only $0.3617 of the $1.0944 rate (33.1%) — far below the audited 56.9% share. Either the AV placeholder is low, the audited GF property-tax line includes categories beyond the current general levy (prior-year collections, penalties, in-lieu payments), or the levy was materially rebalanced. The model keeps the audited FY2025 anchor and flags rate-derived FY27 GF property tax as unresolved until the certified aggregate settles it.