The Knox City Council this week adopted their budget for 2013, but Clerk-Treasurer Jeff Houston pointed out that they did hit a big of a snag. The state originally denied their intent to reestablish the Cumulative Capital Fund because the city did not publish the notice of adoption before Aug. 1 as required, but Houston said that was due to the fact that they did not have enough time to do so.
Houston said that they were behind schedule because they did not learn of the time requirement until June, and since governmental entities are required to publish the notice eight days ahead time, then hold a hearing and go through other time-consuming processes, they simply were unable to meet that deadline. He said a number of other towns and cities are in the same boat, and as a result, the Department of Local Government Finance reconsidered and accepted the city’s reestablishment of the Cumulative Capital Fund.
Unfortunately, the city had originally planned for a two-phase implementation of the fund over two years, with the first year adding 3.3 cents in taxes and 5 cents for the second year per 100 dollars, but the DLGF only approved the rate for the first year. As a result, Houston said that will have to go through this process again next year to increase the rate to the desired 5 cents per $100.
Besides that, the budget for the city was approved at $3,026,908, with taxes levied at $1,315,556. A total tax rate was adopted of 1.4286 percent.
