Franklin BOC to Meet for Second Budget Work Session Tonight

Franklin County commissioners will meet tonight in a called session to discuss their fiscal 2015 budget.
At their initial budget work session last week, county manager John Phillips went over the figures with the board.

“For the fiscal 2015 we’re looking at total expenses of $14,224,940.10,” Phillips said. “This is actually a slight decrease from what we were showing last year. It’s actually a reduction of around $108,000.”

Total projected revenue for FY15, Phillips said is $14, 309,842.  Phillips said the new budget includes adding one new maintenance worker. For the past year, the county has had only one maintenance person, but Phillips said one is not enough to serve the needs of the county.

“If you recall, when we did the restructuring of e911 and Emergency Management, we actually took one of our maintenance workers and made  him the EMA Director and our assistant e911 Director,” Phillips said. “So now we have one person in our maintenance department who is on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

Also, the new budget includes a two-percent increase in county employee salaries across the board.  Phillips said as for revenue expectations, property tax revenues should at least stay the same.

“From talking to our tax assessors, what we’re expecting from our tax digest is that for the first year, and in quite a few years, we’re not expecting any reduction and there’s the possibility with some properties there might actually be a modest increase.  So, that being said, what we’d be looking at as far as revenues from property taxes essentially staying the same.”

Tonight’s called budget meeting includes a public hearing prior to discussions.  The meeting takes place at 6p at the Justice Center in Carnesville.