Informal discussions started this week among members of the Knox County Board’s Finance Committee to plan for another potentially difficult budget year.
The meeting was held -- in part -- because the county board was caught off-guard in November by higher than expected bills.
“We don’t want to get into the position where we end up at the end of the year and we’re needing to find money quickly. We want to be abreast of it,” said Greg Bacon, Finance Committee Chairman.
Bacon and the other members of the committee came up with several ideas to save money, including reducing the county’s mileage rates, sharing services with other city and county governments, and having departments reduce their budgets by at least 5%.
Bacon said none of the suggestions surprised him. Now committee members need to determine how much money would be saved by each of the cost cutting measure.
Bacon said the county is already in a spending deficit for the current year’s budget.
“We’re $200,000 in the hole already because of a three pay day December. We haven’t got income in yet, so it looks pretty bad already,” Bacon said.
Bacon said the county hopes a lawsuit against the State Comptroller will be successful and bring in some revenue to offset the deficit. The lawsuit, filed on Christmas Eve, seeks nearly $100,000 to help fund the salaries of three positions: State's Attorney, Public Defender, and Supervisor of Assessments.
The county’s budget year started December 1.
