The Shelby County Board of Supervisors moved one step closer to approving the 2014 Fiscal Year budget. In a special board meeting Tuesday morning, Shelby County Auditor Marsha Carter introduced eight options for the 2014 budget. After much discussion from the Board, the taxable valuation increase options were narrowed down to two, and finally one.

Shelby County Supervisor Steve Kenkel said the option they narrowed down called for “Ag property 5-percent, Land 5-percent, no increase for residential and minus 4 to Commercial. That was a total of 4.6percent.”  Auditor Marsha Carter told the board even if the option was approved, the County needed to be aware of changes to Mental Health Dollars.  Carter said “We have always been limited since 1993 when the state as froze our Mental Health tax dollars, they were funding with growth dollars to fill the deficit on the county level. Now the state has regionalized, at this point the max we can tax is $47.28 per capita which is a decrease of about $300,000. So that is taken into consideration when talking about the percentage of increase.”  She said the state could change the number later on and would affect the budget.

Before approving the option, Kenkel said every department was well prepared. “I appreciate the process you guys go through. We spent about three partial days and I thought all the department heads were very prepared when they came. We froze some budgets and we raised some for the cost of business and cut some too. We have a good process here and everything was well put together.”

The Shelby County Supervisors approved the Fiscal Year 2014 proposed Budget and set the hearing for Tuesday, February 19^th at 9-am in the basement of the Shelby County Courthouse.

(Joel McCall/KNOD)