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County council tackles budget reductions

After two days of hearing from every department in county government, the Huntington County Council was able to cut only $34,000 from its 2015 budget.

The county initially needed to make a total of $1.8 million in cuts from the budget, but the cuts made during the hearing and some "tweaking" reduced the amount still to be cut to just $340,000.

County Auditor Cindy Yeiter says the council can pass a resolution to stop this year's spending if need be.

"We know where we can come up with some money on that like we did last year," she says. "But we're down now because we've been tweaking the budget and finding we missed one area of putting in replacement credit tax in a formula, so we're down to around $340,000 that needs to be cut."

Yeiter says the council has not decided how it will work the cuts into the proposed budget, but there are some options, such as moving money out of the county's general line item into the public safety LOIT (Local Option Income Tax) fund.

The Clerk's Office budget had to be turned in by July 1 in order to get the budget set, Yeiter explains. However, the possible implementation of vote centers has since complicated the matter, since the county election board gave the nod to establishing vote centers with the stipulation that county poll workers receive a raise. But that raise was not included in the upcoming budget.

"We cannot raise our 2015 budget because it's already been advertised," Yeiter says. "So if poll workers are to get a raise for next year, the clerk would have to come before the council next year and ask for an additional amount."
The County Council will conduct a budget adoption hearing on Monday, Sept. 15, beginning at 8 a.m. in the GAR Room at the Huntington County Courthouse.

That meeting, open to the public, is expected to last much of the day as council goes through the proposals from each department and decides what items to keep, cut or switch.

The Department of Local Government Finance will then review the submitted budget from the county and either approve it or require more cuts.

The council will also conduct non-binding reviews of the budgets of towns and township entities that come before it during the adoption hearing.

Yeiter is optimistic the process will go as smoothly and painlessly as possible.

"I think everybody tried to hold their budgets to streamline things," she says. "I think everyone has done a fine job. We just have to figure out what council wants to do with the budget for next year and go from there."