The June 22 meeting of the Fayette County Commission came with the adoption of a $50 million general fund budget. The best news coming from the meeting is that commissioners again this year are expected to rollback the millage rate in August.
Commissioners adopted the Fiscal Year 2018 budget on a 4-1 vote, with Commissioner Charles Rousseau opposed.
Rousseau said he voted against the budget because he felt the board during the meeting lost its objectivity.
“We ended up discussing personalities rather than the operational needs to provide services to the citizens. The ‘no’ vote was against the process,” Rousseau said.
Rousseau said county staff and the finance department did an excellent job in presenting the budget.
The $50,019,064 budget comes with no cost-of-living increase for employees and no one-time payments. Commissioners approved a merit-based increase based on 2.75 percent of the total county payroll.
Commissioners with the budget adoption approved the addition of 12 full- and part-time staff. Those include a special events and marketing coordinator in Parks and Recreation, a plans examiner for Building Safety, an equipment operator (mowing) and a roads maintenance worker (mowing crew) for Roads, a personal and real property appraiser for the Tax Assessor, an environmental engineer for Environmental Management, a finance analyst for Finance and a utility services technician and two distribution maintenance workers for the Fayette County Water System.
Staff said personnel costs account for 65 percent of expenditures, while 17.8 percent of expenditures are for purchases and contracts, 8.6 percent for supplies and 6.6 goes for debt service.
Of personnel costs, 76 percent goes to salaries with the remainder slated for benefits.
The revenue breakdown shows property taxes accounting for 59.7 percent of revenues, sales taxes generating 23.9 percent, charges for services at 6.3 percent and fines and forfeitures at 3.2 percent.
The commission in August is expected to rollback the millage rate once the tax digest has been received. A rollback is when the board rolls back the tax rate to take in approximately the same amount as it did before the recent property tax assessment increases.
Though significant in terms of the budget adoption, county revenues and expenditures and the upcoming millage rollback, the meeting online on June 27 received 95 views from the public.
