Thursday morning the Marshall County Council held the first reading of the 2024 budget.
With the new council members, the process of reviewing the budget requests was a much shorter process.
Council members have had a copy of the budget requests for about 2 weeks, giving them an opportunity to review the 73 different budgets between the General Fund and the Special Funds. As Council President Jesse Bohannon opened the hearing and said, “This is a mammoth process.” He explained the new process saying, “The use of the Budget & Finance Committee has been very valuable in guiding this process. Today is the first reading and this is basically the council receiving the budget request from the departments.”
While council members had the opportunity to ask questions of the department heads that attended the meeting, for the most part, Bohannon read the budget name, specified if it was a special fund or in the general fund, and gave the budget total requested by each department.
Between now and the August 29th meeting of the Budget & Finance Committee, President Bohannon asked council members to submit written recommendations on reductions to next year’s budget.
County Auditor Angie Birchmeier said the preliminary estimated revenues for the General Fund in 2024 is $15,280,974.50. Prior to the additions made to the budget during Thursday’s meeting, the General Fund budget requests were $16,115,924 giving the county a deficit of $834,949.50 in just the General Fund budgets. Requests for both the General Fund and Special Funds for 2024 are over $35 million and last year that amount was about $32 million.
