A big chunk of contribution money the County contributed to variousorganizations was cut out of the budget during last night’s meeting of the
Cannon County Budget committee. The budget committee agreed to ax the
$100 contribution to the Cannon County Basketball Program.
Also cut from the contribution list was $100 for Cannon County Youth
Dream, $500 for Family Traditions, $5,000 for SAVE, $100 for the Stones
River Watershed Association, $750 for Tennessee Rehab and $150 for the
Woodbury Lions Club. The contribution from the County to the Senior Center
will remain at $6500 and more research will be done on the Forestry
Division’s request for $1000.
The Committee mainly reviewed the various departments budgets and did very
little cutting last night after doing the majority of the budget request
cuts throughout the last few weeks. Committee member Kevin George said
that he looked deeper into the budget and brought up the Ambulance
Service. He reviewed several other counties ambulance services who were
comparable in size to Cannon County. The Revenue for the Ambulance
Service is $495,000 whereas the expenses total up to $782,000 Mr. George
said that when he looked at the other counties in comparison that the
revenue and expenses were close to matching each other and that the
various counties had to spend little extra funding the ambulance
department. He then stated before he would even start to consider a tax
increase, he wants to know what other counties are doing to close the gap
between expenses vs revenue, thus helping the committee to consider ways
to do the same.
As with every budget request, increases in salaries for County employees
are requested. Committee Chairman Mark Barker wants figures worked up
for next week to see what the budget would look like if all employees were
given a one percent raise. The amount should also reflect the social
security amount of each as well.
The Budget Committee will meet next Thursday to review the Cannon County
Schools budget request at 6:00 at the Cannon County Courthouse.
