This week, the county board’s budget committee will continue to try and look for ways to eliminate a budget deficit that has been whittled down from $1.2-million to $220,000.
Board Chairman Brain Freidrich said the committee is looking into whether it’s cheaper to pay employees mileage to use their own vehicles, or have the county own and maintain vehicles for employees use. He said it this may be the last step before personnel cuts are considered.
“We have been talking to the unions about the possibility of layoffs and they’ve talked to us about if they can do anything to help us with that. We’ve not actually set layoffs yet, but they’re the next step if we can’t get things figured out,” Freidrich said.
Freidrich said he expects around three to four more budget related meetings in November. “We worked about six weeks getting down $1.2 (million) to $220,000. Like Greg Bacon said, we’ve scraped down the barrel and scraped it again,” Freidrich said.
The committee plans to present a balanced budget to the full county board by December 1st.
