At a Sept. 19 public hearing for Walker County's fiscal year 2020 budget, residents were silent. Instead, Walker County Commissioner Shannon Whitfield used the time to discuss his process in creating the $27,551,959 budget which begins Oct. 1.
By the time of last Thursday's meeting, the county was already on its second draft of the budget, and officials expected the final approved copy to be draft four or five as Whitfield continues to work with various departments. The 74 departments funded by the county requested a total of $27,181,235, about $370,00 less than budgeted.
"The budget process is getting easier each year. We've made a lot of progress in our system as far as working with purchase orders and having a realistic budget the last couple years," Whitfield said.
The biggest uptick in expenditures is to personnel, which is budgeted for $440,700, about $67,000 more than last year. Whitfield said this is due to providing competitive wages and benefits to employees of the county.
Shannon Whitfield"We are looking at wages and then the other things that go along with matching taxes and medical insurance, retirement," he explained.
When Whitfield took office in January 2017, the county had just enough money to pay its employees through the end of the month. Two weeks into the job, he made plans to borrow $8 million to pay down debt inherited from previous administrations, which included a $227,000 payment for a 5-year-old bond, a $1.2 million payment for a 1-1/2-year-old bond, and utility bills that were months overdue.
While in office, he has committed to fiscal responsibility, which includes a balanced budget (per Georgia law) and trying to keep the county out of debt.
Whitfield also noted that he's been working with Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson to get the sheriff's office its fully requested budget. In the 10 years that Wilson has held the position, Whitfield said the sheriff has never received all of his requested budget from past county administrations.
"We've made a lot of progress [in the budget process], but we have some more internal discussions," said Whitfield.
The regularly scheduled Walker County Commissioner meeting for Sept. 26 was moved to Sept. 24 to accommodate Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's town hall meeting at Fairyland Elementary School in Lookout Mountain. Whitfield is expected to approve the budget during a special called meeting Sept. 30 at noon at his office at 101 S. Duke St. in LaFayette. The meeting is open to the public.
"There's a lot of moving pieces, and we're trying to look into the magic ball to determine what's going to happen to predict the future with a budget," Whitfield said.
Email Sabrina Bodon at sbodon@timesfreepress.com.