White County Commissioners moved forward with a detailed review of the new budget Monday night despite failing to reach a quorum for their regularly scheduled meeting.
Finance Director Chad Marcum said the $21 million budget includes a 3 percent across-the-board cost-of-living adjustment, increased election expenses, and a new custodian for the upcoming health department building.
“You guys see the other things is just costs have gone up just because, insurances primarily the big hitting,” Marcum said. “But essentially if you took out those three things, the three percent, the custodian and the hose testing, it would it would pretty much be last year’s budget with the necessary, you know, adjustments from for contracts and stuff.”
Chair Derrick Hutchings said the presence of only seven members meant the body could not conduct official business or pass resolutions.
“But we do have on the agenda for the commissioners to discuss fiscal year 2027 budget,” Hutchings said. “So we’re still able to discuss those things because we’re not making any decisions, but as far as conducting business and passing any of the resolutions, we will not be able to do that tonight.”
Hutchings said the current proposal reflects a deficit of approximately $389,000, which he noted is similar to the previous year’s budget.
Commissioner TK Austin said he would prefer to see the deficit reduced to around $350,000 to avoid potential long-term financial risks.
“I mean, it at some point it’s going to catch us,” Austin said. “I know I don’t run my business with a deficit. I mean, I look, I figure how I’m going to fund everything before I do it. I don’t just throw it out there and hope that the money’s there.”
The proposed general fund includes projected revenues of $21,243,142 and expenditures of $21,632,639. Marcum said the county plans to separate daily operations from large capital projects, such as courthouse roof repairs and parking lot paving. He said these projects could be funded through budget amendments later in the year if surplus funds become available after the current books are closed.
“The idea my thought process and, you know, we’ve kind of always grouped operations and capital together and my thought process in kind of holding them separate is to, you know, this is what it takes to run on a daily basis and if we need to if we can do some of these big capital projects after we kind of the dust settles and we know where we’re at, then we can take a swing at those,” Dirk said. “And if not, then we put it off for another year and move forward.”
The commission also discussed a shift in the Emergency Medical Services vehicle rotation, moving from two remounted ambulances to one new ambulance per year.
The budget committee is scheduled to meet again on June 1 to formally approve the proposal. Marcum said the budget must be published by June 5 to meet the state-mandated 10-day notice requirement before a final vote can be held on June 15.
The question remains, will commissioners show up?
“Nobody’s showing up to the budget meetings and this is the best chance we had to get a quorum, we didn’t even get a quorum tonight, so we’d have to call a special call meeting to discuss it, and are we going to have anybody else show up on a special night that we’re not having ordinarily is my concern,” Hutchings said.
“We’re down to the line again, yet again, on this budget getting passed on time,” Austin said.