Ashe County 2009-10 Budget Approved

By Ron Fitzwater

On Monday, June 29, the Ashe County Board of Commissioners passed the anticipated 2009-10 county budget, with very few changes from the previous year.

Ashe County Manager Dan McMillan said that there had been no changes to the budget since the public hearing a few weeks ago and Monday's finalization.

"Everything has stayed pretty much the same because of the state and the two new tiers with the income tax rate. They think they will be able to pick up some $150 million by adding one-time taxes. So they didn't take anything else away and were going to add some to education so we felt good about what we had.

"We adopted the budget the way it was which was at $29.6 million, which is about $500,000 less than it was last year.

"We are looking at trying to keep everything the same as it was last year or as close to it as we can. To that end, the board kept all appropriated programs and projects and are just below what it was last year," he said.

McMillan said that the board had changed the revenue for the county a little bit because they were not satisfied that they would get as much sales tax as was first proposed. So commissioners did go back and change the sales tax where it looked like they would be getting less. This allowed them to add to the fund balance and increase it from $1.6 to $2 million.

"Hopefully the sales tax will be such that we won't have to use that," McMillan added.

"We tried to look as close as we could to what other counties were doing: Alleghany was laying off teachers and some county employees; Watauga and Wilkes are looking at that as well, and we feel like with the fund balance that we have and our revenues staying fairly good except for in-county revenues [building inspections, parks and recreation, etc.] those we knew would be effected by the economy were up to 50 to 70 percent below what we had projected.

"Otherwise we felt good about where we were at and have been able to maintain employees and we feel like we are in good shape."

Some new money has been allocated to fund two new positions that will be needed at the new Law Enforcement Center, and some additional funding has been allocated for the library project.

McMillan said that the board looked at recent requests for funding assistance and that each request was considered carefully.

"We did not put any money into the Lansing or River View Medical Clinics, mainly because they are not free clinics and they did not get any money through the Rural Health Center. One of the things we were concerned about was that if the Rural Health Center, that normally funds these things, did not give it any money we wanted to know why. So we decided this was not the thing for us.

"They [commissioners] did want to give money to the Ashe Free Medical Clinic, but did not want it to become a reoccurring appropriation commitment. So we did not include it in the budget, but with contingency money left over from the fund balance of the 2008-09 budget, the board made a one-time appropriation of $25,000 for the free clinic. This is old money.

"With the pool project, we have made a non-budgeted commitment for $83,000 which is one-third of the cost. Equal amounts are to come from the Board of Education and the pool committee. The project will cost approximately $250,000 to complete.

The Ashe County Board of Commissioners meet the first and third Monday of each month in the small second-floor courtroom of the Ashe County Courthouse in Jefferson. Meetings begin at 3:30 p.m. and are open to the public.