Franklin Co. Putting Final Touches on Proposed FY 17 Budget

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

Franklin County Commissioners are working with the County Manager on the Fiscal Year 2017 budget..

The county’s fiscal year begins July 1 so the budget must be finalized and passed by June 30.

Franklin County Manager Beth Thomas said the county is right where she expected it to be financially by this time in the current fiscal year.

However, she said there is no extra money in the reserve funds.

Thomas said that is one reason why Franklin County is borrowing money to make it through to the end of the calendar year.

“If you look at the health of the county from a balance sheet perspective, we’re very low leveraged,” Thomas said. “We don’t have a lot of debt, but like I said last year with the budget cycle, we have utilized all of our reserves. When you do that you get into a cash flow situation where you do have to do temporary borrowing. It doesn’t mean you’re going into the hole, but we approved a tax anticipation note to counter that.”

According to Thomas, department heads have spent the past several months going over their budgets and new state mandates coming on line.

Once those are submitted to Thomas, work begins on determining how much money Franklin County will have to work with in FY 2017.

“Truly the budget works to where you analyze what your expenditures need to be. You do that first. That’s what all the department heads are doing when they’re looking to see what are the state mandates, what are our requirement for next year, we have a Department of Labor rule coming out; anything that’s going to have a significant impact. Then you look at your revenue stream,” Thomas explained.

Thomas said one problem this year is less local option sales tax, or LOST, revenue.

While lower gas prices have been good for drivers over the past year, Thomas said it hasn’t been good for the county coffers.

“Because 30% of that revenue stream is generated from fuel and fuel prices have seen such a decrease over the past year, our LOST revenue will see a decrease in the range of $250,000 to $300,000 year over year,” Thomas said.

Thomas said she expects that Franklin County’s preliminary budget to be completed by the commission’s work session on May 24.

After that there will be two public hearings and a final vote to pass the budget at a called meeting in June.