County Commission Approves Budget Resolutions
Thursday, June 22, 2017
by Bailey Basham, Messenger Staff Writer
Resolutions to all budgets, fund balances and lease purchases were approved by the Franklin County Board of Commissioners during the June 19 meeting.
Andrea Smith, Director of Finance, said amendments to the Report of Revenues and Expenditures for March and April were commonplace for this time of year.
“This is just the year-end clean up amendment,” said Smith. “We had some revisions come up since the finance committee meeting.”
According to Smith, those revisions entail project preservation being operated out of the county general fund; an increase in revenue from the Health Department and a reduction in the funds for local health services to pay for the increase from the Health Department.
“The only fund where we had to use fund balance is the general debt service fund number, fund 151, for debt issuance on the jail construction expansion. There’s some upfront cost on that, which we don’t generally have budgeted,” said Smith. “We had a lot of maintenance issues this year which had been abnormal over the past few years—[things like] equipment, all funds and maintenance of buildings, as well as the normal ups and downs for jail inmate expenses.”
A motion to approve the recommendation from the Franklin County Regional Planning Commission for the rezoning of a 2.52-acre property on Highway 64 and Walnut Hill Road was carried by the commission.
Amendments to the Board of Education’s general purpose school budget were approved. Smith said she expects the final budget will be submitted for review by the finance committee early next month.
Also approved was a resolution to adopt a new public records policy.
“We currently have a public records policy for anyone to do a request for the county. The state passed the legislation earlier in the year, and they put more stipulations in the minimum requirements. We worked with Ben Lynch [city attorney] and looked at our current policy to draft a new policy. It has to be approved by June 30.”
This policy states that the policy is being adopted to “ provide economical and efficient access to public records as provided under the Tennessee Public Records Act (TPRA).”
Iris Rudder, seat B for the 1st District, motioned to approve a litigation fee request by Haven of Hope, a shelter for victims of domestic violence.
The next county commission meeting will be at 7 p.m., Monday, July 17, in the Franklin County Courthouse.