Hart County Sets Timetable for FY14 Budget Talks
Hart County Commissioners say they don’t want a repeat of last year and plan to have their fiscal 2014 budget done and ready to be approved by the end of August.
Hart County’s fiscal year begins October first. Last year, the board of commissioners passed the FY13 budget in late November because the tax digest was not ready.
At their meeting Tuesday, the board approved both the 2010 and 2011 millage rollback resolutions and millage rates bringing the county closer to a current 2013 tax digest, which they hope to have in place by the fall.
Commission chair Bill Myers said he would like to schedule two budget work sessions a month through the end of July.
“We have five meetings, in June, July, and August,” Myers told the board. “I’d like to have the budget discussed and settled by the end of August. So we can go into September and already be done. We are going to have a zero budget, and I want it out before October.”
County administrator Jon Caime presented the initial FY14 budget to the board Tuesday. Caime noted the county is facing a large discrepancy between departmental budget requests and anticipated revenue.
“The budget requests for FY14 is already almost $11.1 million,” he told the board. “The first draft budget that I presented to you has expenses of $9,757,000, which is a net reduction of $1.3 million from me out of that $11.1 million in requests.”
Caime said anticipated revenue is still a question because the final property tax bills for the past four years have not yet gone out.
“Our current year revenues are looking at somewhere around $9.1 million,” he said. “We’re looking at $9.8 million in expenses for 2014. I don’t see a whole lot of improvement in revenues. So I would suspect that whatever revenues we see in 2013, we’re not going to see a great improvement for 2014.”
Caime said so far revenues have come in under $9-million for 2012 and he believes the county will have to look at more cuts to balance the budget in FY14.
The board will hold its first budget work session after their next regular meeting on June 25th.