Jackson Finalizes Budget, Vote Next Monday

Following a work session Monday night, Jackson County Commissioners will hold a special meeting next Monday to vote on the new fiscal year budget.

Jackson County’s budget includes a five percent raise for school system employees across the board and smaller increases for the highway department and county employees. Jackson County Mayor Randy Heady said the raises in the budget will be done without any tax increase.

“You know, a lot of people were concerned that they were not going to get anything, but we are going to be able to give them something plus be able to do this and still have a very good budget,” Heady said. “So I’m pretty excited about that. I felt good about what we did this year. A lot of hard work and a lot of good stuff coming out of it.”

The budget consists of some one-time expenditures for the EMS, the Sheriff’s Department, and upgrades for the jail. Heady said he was ecstatic about handling the expenditures without having to ask for more money from Jackson County Residents.

“There was just a lot of one-time money in this budget,” Heady said. “I’m proud we are able to do this without doing property taxes or any other tax increase on the people.”

Heady said commissioners met multiple times in the past few months to get everything set up for the upcoming meeting.

“You know when you are a small county we just want to make sure our revenues look good,” Heady said. “If you wait till about the first or second week in July you can know that the revenues that you projected are exactly what you thought they would be and they were this year.”

Heady said after the work session on Monday he is very confident the budget will be passed in the upcoming meeting. Heady even said they probably could have already passed the budget.

“Part of me wishes we went ahead and done it tonight you know,” Heady said. “Because we could have passed it tonight with no problem, but we didn’t do that. We set up a special called meeting for next Monday just for the sole purpose of the budget.”

In other business, Commissioners approved to let the highway department sell a surplus tractor after purchasing an upgraded tractor.