White Co Commission Approves Budget With More 9-11 Funding

Additional 9-11 funding, employee raises and some new deputy vehicles among the new expenditures of White County’s newest budget.

Commissioners passed a budget that includes an estimated $15 million dollar general fund Monday. County Executive Denny Wayne Robinson said besides those additions, the spending plan remains pretty consistent to last year.

“9-11 that is just to help with their operating expense,” Robinson said. “We’ve been giving them the same amount of money for years, and it was time that they got a little bit of an increase, because they’ve had the same issues like everybody us with wages and workforce.”

Robinson said all employees will receive a five percent raise in this budget. Robinson said there is also extra allocations for rising fuel costs. No tax increases, changes to the penny rate or new positions were included.

“I’m real happy with it,” Robinson said. “Revenue expectations are good. We were very conservative with this budget, because there is a possibility of a little down turn in the economy, so we’re preparing for that.”

Robinson said the road to completing the budget was labor extensive considering the additional federal COVID money. Robinson said being a centralized finance county helped the process.

“We’re probably one of the few counties that actually gets it passed in June,” Robinson said. “We’ve been lucky to do so for the past six or seven years. Chad (Marcum) does an excellent job. We are an 81 financial act. We have centralized financing, so that makes it a lot easier to actually prepare the budget, because we have one department that does it for the whole county.”

Robinson said commissioners and school board members also worked well together this budget season. The school’s $34 million spending plan was a part of the approved budget as well as $2.9 million highway fund and a $1.4 million solid waste fund.