Now is the

time to save for a rainy day, not the time for a tax cut.

That's a

tentative consensus reached by Fayette County

commissioners Monday night during their first in-depth

workshop on the fiscal 2000 budget.

A rainy day

is coming, county administrator Billy Beckett assured the

group. "I would suggest that any excess be set aside

to apply on a priority basis" to any of several

crises that will face the county in the near future, he

told the group. "They're coming, you can count on

that," he added.

The group

tentatively approved the budget requests of six out of 42

county departments, plus all ten special revenue funds.

They will plow through the rest of the $48.6 million

budget in three more work sessions in hopes of adopting

the document June 24.

Commissioner

Greg Dunn opened a more philosophical discussion of the

budget when he questioned the county's reserve funds and

pointed out that revenue this year is expected to

increase by 7 percent.

"Have

we considered at all finding a way to return some of that

to the taxpayers rather than finding a way to spend

it?" Dunn wondered.

Commissioner

Linda Wells ticked off a list of expensive problems the

county faces in the near future and said, "We don't

have excess money."

Beckett

said that in reality, the 2000 budget proposes returning

$1.3 million to the taxpayers. That's how much money is

being shifted from the reserve fund into the general

fund.

But that

money won't go back into taxpayers' pockets. It will

simply pay for some of the expenditures for FY2000, thus

preventing any tax increase.

In his

written introduction to the proposed budget, Beckett

pointed out that the county is facing the immediate need

to build a new jail and judicial complex, the planned

Lake McIntosh construction project and numerous other

water-related projects, plus new environmental standards.

For

instance, counties in the near future may be required to

collect and treat storm water runoff before releasing it

into streams, a requirement that would cost Fayette

millions of dollars, he said.

"You

don't have nearly as much as you think you do,"

Beckett said of the reserve funds.

Commissioners

asked for a detailed accounting of reserve funds, showing

how much of reserves are "encumbered" -

earmarked for projects the county is already committed to

- and how much are actually available for future use

or for tax cuts.

Meanwhile,

Dunn said he understands the need to save for a rainy

day. "I'm a realist... it's [tax cut] not going to

happen this year."

But he left

the group with the rhetorical question: "Our

property taxes all went up for the seventh straight

year... when are we doing to give people a break?"

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