Commissioners Pass $5.4 Million Dollar Budget

By Mike Scott
Clark County plans to spend just under $5.5 million dollars this year. That’s $900,845.60
more than the county’s actual 2015 expenses.

The 2016 Clark County budget, approved by the commissioners on Tuesday, January 26, projects total expenses for the year to total $5,471,138.22.

The budget shows that the county started 2016 with $984,158.92 in available funds. Revenues for 2016 will total $5241,838.67, giving the county $6,225,997.59 in total funds available for the year. According to the budget, the county will end 2016 with $754859.37 in available funds.

Most funds’ budgets are close to 2015 actual expenses, but there are few with noticeable
increases. One example of a fund with a large increase is the elections fund, which spent only $18,968.02 last year. With three elections this year, the budget is $42,495.

The Building and Grounds fund includes $23,500 for E-911 mapping this year. The largest increase is in the road budget, which increased $695,828.56. An examination of that budget shows the county plans to spend nearly four times what it did in 2015 for road rock. They also plan a $136,000 equipment purchase, and will spend $830,000 on road and bridge construction projects.
Full time employee wages in the Road and Bridge Department actually declined.

The full budget is available for review at The Media office.

County Clerk Jena Church’s budget message read: “The 2016 Budget is finally completed. It was a very hard budget to finalize, but the Commissioners did a great job trying to make sure all revenues were estimated as well as they could be and the expenditures fell into those revenues as close
as possible. This is all an estimate, so we will see at the end of the year how well we did with those estimates.”