Members of the Marshall County Council reviewed the 2022 budget requests during their first public hearing Monday morning August 9th.
The General Fund budget requests for next year totaled $14,869,137 and the Special Funds totaled $16,833,642 making the total budget requests among the more than 60 individual budgets for 2022 at $31,702,779.
Marshall County Auditor Julie Fox said the state has not released the estimated revenues so there is no way to know how much will need to be cut from the budget requests to meet the revenues.
Most of the department heads, elected and appointed, attended the hearing, and stepped forward as the County Council quickly reviewed their proposed budgets for next year.
There were a couple who asked to increase their budgets for next year. The Marshall County Park and Recreation Board submitted their first budget since being created. Their total request was $124,000 and included $100,000 for the West Township Log Cabin, $2,000 for the Trails at Mill Pond, $2,000 for the Memorial Forest and $2,000 for the Yellow River canoe and kayak launches. They also included $1,000 for supplies and Park Board Secretary Deb VanDeMark asked to increase that line item to $2,000 so they can purchase a lap-top computer to keep the meeting agendas, minutes and notes in one location.
County Commissioner Kevin Overmyer spoke to the County Council on the additional damage found on the clocktower. While the estimated additional cost is not yet known, but he suggested the Council budget another $1.5 million in the Rainy Day Fund for the work.
The final additional was $45,000 for vehicle purchases in the Cum Cap Development Fund. Commissioner Klotz said they are about to finish up with all the lease vehicle through Enterprise. He said, the idea is, with all 13 vehicles from the lease, at the end of the year we will owe $3,000 to $5,000 and they will all be paid off. He said, “The problem is we don’t want to get back in the same boat where we have a bunch of vehicles needing to roll over at once. We will start with that $50,000 getting on a rotation based on the higher mileage vehicles.” He said some years the amount may be higher and some years lower. Klotz said, “It’s going to be based on need and not want.”
There were no decisions made during Monday’s meeting. The County Council will conduct another budget hearing on Monday, September 13th. That will be a longer meeting when the council will have to review each budget line by line and make the decisions of what cuts will be made to reduce the 2022 budgets to meet the county’s estimated revenues.
