Feb. 1—Whitfield County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jevin Jensen has announced he will seek reelection this year.

Jensen, a Republican, was first elected chairman in 2020 and took office in January 2021.

“During the past three years we have made amazing progress for the citizens of Whitfield County in so many areas,” Jensen said. “I look forward to serving all county residents for another term and continuing our shared success.”

“It has been a team effort,” he said. “All of the commissioners, the staff and even the citizens. They give us the authority and the support.”

Jensen said he thinks the commissioners’ biggest accomplishment has been cutting property taxes three years in a row.

“We didn’t just cut the millage rate,” he said. “We’ve actually cut the revenue, which means we are taxing citizens less than in 2019.”

Jensen said taxpayers have saved about $12 million during the past three years because of those cuts.

The commissioners also eliminated a special tax district that funded the county’s share of the Whitfield County Senior Center, the Dalton-Whitfield County Public Library and the Dalton-Whitfield County Joint Development Authority. That resulted in a .397-mill tax cut for those who own property in the county outside the city of Dalton.

“Another big win, and one that doesn’t get talked about as much, is paying down our debt,” he said. “People don’t realize that at the end of 2020 we had almost exactly $30 million in debt. By this fall, we’ll have that down to $1.5 million, basically a 95% reduction.”

“That gives us a lot more flexibility,” he said. “If we do have a downturn, we’ll be more able to weather that.”

He said he’s also proud the county was able to successfully negotiate Local Option Sales Tax (LOST), service delivery and other agreements with its cities.

“Yeah, we had to do them,” he said. “But we did them without arbitration, without getting judges involved, without requesting extensions (from the state).”

“Looking forward, now that we have those mandatory agreements out of the way, I want to see what kind of agreements, what sort of cooperation we can have to improve services to our citizens, to reduce costs to our taxpayers,” he said.

They also put together a four-year Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) that will be on the general primary ballot in May.

Jensen, who has a bachelor’s degree in business management with an economics minor from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, works for Boston, Massachusetts-based consulting firm IDC.

Jensen said he is also proud the county received $7.3 million in grants in 2023, some $1 million more than in 2022.

“Over the last three years we’ve gotten over $16 million in grants,” he said. “It was around $600,000 or $700,000 in 2020. That allows us to do things without raising taxes or cutting services in other areas — sewer expansion, meals at the senior center and other things.”

Jensen said economic development will be a key priority if he is reelected.

“I’m really proud of what we have done with the Carbondale Business Park,” he said. “We’ve got that thing nearly full. We’ve got one usable piece of property left and one unusable. We’ve got automotive in there. We’ve got green energy. We’ve got food service. That’s pretty diversified.”

He said he’d like to “take that to another level.”

“There’s other land we could unlock,” he said. “We could bring in more jobs, higher-paying jobs. I’m pushing the (Dalton-Whitfield Joint Development Authority) to bring in high-tech. We don’t have much high-tech investment in Whitfield County. Maybe services. There’s no requirement that we just have to have manufacturing. There’s some pretty high-paying jobs in services — insurance, banking, consulting. Those are good jobs.”

Jensen said paving and the resurfacing of county roads will also be a priority.

“We resurfaced 72 miles of county roads in the last three years, up an average of 300% over prior years,” he said. “But I think we can do better. We want to do over 30 miles (a year). We did 24 (in 2023) and have six more in the process. I feel confident we will get 30 miles this year. We want to get our bridges up to the new (truck) weight limits the state has set.”

For more information on Jensen, visit his Facebook or Instagram accounts or www.electjevinjensen.com.