The County Budget Committee passed the actual budget for the 2011-2012fiscal year. The challenge though was working to find an agreeable way to
fund the budget. The Committee made up of Chairman Mark Barker, Clint
Higgins, Kevin George, James Adkins and Bill Jennings sat at the round
table and discussed the various ways to fund the budget. According to the
updated budget figures report, the Estimated Ending Fund Balance was
$502,900.00. If revenues do not increase during the 2011-2012 fiscal
year, the fund balance will end up in a estimated low $2,698.00. The
State Auditors suggest that a county stores 3 months of operating expenses
in the General Fund Balance.
Cannon County easily spends more money than the revenues they take in.
Estimated Expenditures for the 2010-2011 year totals $6,063,243.00 while
total estimated revenue for the fiscal year equaled out to be
$5,865,338.00. Estimated Revenues for the 2011-2012 fiscal year will only
be $5,008,460.00 while the expenditures total out at $5,514.058.40. One
small minor cut was made to the budget Thursday night and that was in the
line item of Maintenance Agreements of the Election Commission Office
which was scaled back to the $11,611.00 figure that was budgeted last
year. The Committee went over their thoughts on some of the larger
budgeted departments in the county. Once again it was brought out that
the County Ambulance Service has had a high expense going out to revenue
coming in issue. Ambulance Director Ricky Cope attended the meeting and
assured the Committee, he was doing the best job he could do but because
of the low call volume, low costs of Medicare payments, and ambulances
having to transport patients outside of Cannon County the issues would
still exist. There is a collection agency that is working to collect some
of the money owed to the Ambulance Service by patients and insurance
companies. This should have a positive impact on bringing in more revenue
for the Ambulance Department.
County Solid Waste was talked about. Per the report total estimated
revenues for the 2010-2011 fiscal year came out to be $505,488.00 with
expenditures estimated at $515,757.00. Estimated Ending Fund Balance for
Solid Waste for the 2011-2012 fiscal year shows a negative $41,509.00
balance
The Committee then started talking about ways to increase revenue as
almost all County Departments either retained the same amount of money as
last year’s budget or made more cuts to turn in figures showing a decrease
in their budgets than from the year before. This in itself showed the
issue was one of revenue. The Committee mentioned looking into increasing
local sales tax to the level it is in neighboring counties. The possible
solution would have to be put on a referendum in order for the public to
vote. Next solution was a possible increase in property taxes. The
Committee members debated on the solution, but in the end all agreed that
in order for the budget to be funded, a property tax increase had to be in
order. The current property tax rate is $2.32 which broke down to 16
cents going to solid waste, 4 cents to the Debt Services, $1.22 going to
County General with the remaining 89 cents going toward schools. It was
voted on amongst the committee members to request a 20 cent property tax
increase which will add 3 cents to solid waste bringing the total to 19
cents. Debt Services will remain the same at 4 cents while the County
General fund will get 16 cents of the increase totalling $1.38. The
Schools will receive a penny totalling 90 cents. The property tax rate
would then be $2.52 but as the Committee pointed out on an average
property valued at $100,000 the property tax would only increase $50.00
breaking down even further to $1.00 a week. The Committee will present
the budget request for approval along with the separate request of budget
funding to the full Cannon County Commissioners on July 16th. County
Executive Mike Gannon states there have been Commissioners in the past
that have been all for the budget requests but when it came time to vote
for funding the budget, the same commissioners turned it down. Both
budget and funding of the budget will be voted on separately at the
Saturday meeting.
