Commissioners pass 2011 budget
By Bob Robinson
Darke County Commissioners passed a 2011 county budget that will be $360,626 less than the county’s 2010 appropriation.
According to Darke County Auditor Carol Ginn, the commissioners originally asked all department heads to “flat-line” their request for next year, but because of a downtrend in expected revenues, they had to ask for an additional 2.5 percent reduction.
“This was not due to spending,” Ginn said, but a combination of “sales tax, local government revenue from the state, interest earnings and all other county revenue being estimated lower for 2011.”
The budget submitted, and approved, was for $14,191,447. The 2010 appropriation, passed Jan. 6, was $14,539,636. The 2010 appropriation was nearly a million dollars less than in 2009.
Ginn thanked the commissioners and all other elected officials for “continuing to work together to help balance the county budget.”
In June, the commissioners passed a resolution to assure that $1.4 million of total county revenue will be held over for cash flow the first three months of 2011. This would equate to approximately $1.42 million in the anticipated budget. A second part of the resolution designated actual revenues over $13 million to be split between the General Fund and the Permanent Improvement-Capital Projects Fund.
In 2010 no money had been set aside for capital improvements due to the slide in the economy.
The county budget is only a portion of the funds for which County Commissioners are held accountable. In 2010, total appropriations – county, state and federal – came to $58,224,707. Total appropriations for 2011 won’t be available until commissioners pass the budget the first of the year.
Bob Robinson is the retired editor of The Daily Advocate, Greenville, Ohio. If you wish to receive notification of his comments, opinions and reports when they are posted, send your email address to: opinionsbybob@gmail.com. Feel free to express your views.
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