The Marshall County Council spent the better part of Tuesday reviewing the 2020 budget requests.
Julie Fox, the Marshall County Auditor said the council needed to cut about $962,000 out of the requests for next year.
Commissioner Kevin Overmyer told the council, “You have a huge task ahead of you. Hopefully we can get through this together.” He then made a couple of suggestions and also offered up some reductions from their budget.
The first recommendation presented was to move the HR position from the Auditor’s budget to the Commissioner’s budget and have that person be under the commissioners. Later in the meeting Commissioner Mike Delp said, “I’m not sold on the change for HR yet.”
He also recommended allowing the County Maintenance Department to hire another maintenance person due to the increased population in the jail. Overmyer said while department heads were told to increase full time salaries by $1,500 for each county employee he felt a more realistic number would be $1,000. He also recommended no raised for elected officials.
The Commissioners the offered a cut of $280,000 from Group Health Insurance, $10,000 out of Legal Services, $25,000 from Insurance and $55,000 from Repair of Building and Structures.
Some of the items requested in the budget for next year include four vehicles for the Sheriff’s Department, a new boiler for the County Building, increased to pauper council, a new vehicle for the Health Department and two for the Surveyor.
Fund by fund and line by line the county council members scoured the budget. While they discussed cuts, and some were offered, no official action was taken. The council will make official cuts to the budget on September 9th and the Budget Adoption is scheduled for October 14.
Council members estimated they had already pinpointed just over $700,000 in cuts during the session. It was also pointed out that the property tax cap had a negative impact of $559,000 on next year’s budget.
