The Putnam County Commissioners officially passed the budget for fiscal year 2025-26 at Monday’s meeting with no changes.
The budget approved as recommended from the Budget Committee. The property tax rate will remain at $2.66, which as the same as last year. Commissioner Sam Sandlin said a lot of discussion went into crafting this year’s budget.
“The Budget Committee spent seven nights of hour and a half, two and a half hour meetings at almost 100 percent attendance,” Sandlin said. “Everybody did their homework and brought it. And worked hard. And we were able to craft a compromise.”
The new budget projects $61.9 million in revenue and $68.2 million in expenditures with the gap to be closed by money from the county fund balance.
As part of the budget, county employees will receive a step raise, which will cost some $345,000. Several new employees are to be hired as well.
“I just want to remind everybody that all those things, those new 17 employees, all the new stuff, it’s not going to go away,” Sandlin said. “It’ll be there next year too. So next year may be more of a challenge for the budget committee than this year was.”
The overall budget passed 21-2, with Commissioners Chris Cassetty and Theresa Tays voting against it. As a member of the budget committee, Cassetty was an advocate for more budget cuts throughout the entire process.
The resolution rounding property taxes to the nearest dollar passed with the same margin. The no votes were Commissioners Dale Ross and Robert Riddle.
The other resolutions were all passed unanimously. Commissioner Fred Vondra was absent from the meeting.
The committee ultimately had each department head cut their budget by 10 percent to slice the gap down. The committee also revised the way the school system is funded, by changing their method of funding to 50 percent of sales tax revenue instead of a flat rate.
“I was proud to be a part of that committee,” Sandlin said. “I just want to congratulate Chairman [Ben Rodgers]. I think everyone did a good job. There’s a lot of work that goes into a compromised budget like this.”
The Commissioners passed the budget as six individual items. First came the detailed budget numbers, followed by the tax rate and appropriation resolutions, the charitable and nonprofit resolution, a resolution to round property tax collection to the nearest dollar, and the opioid resolution.
