Starke County officials will need to push the pencil to the paper to come up with about $838,000 in cuts to the 2019 budget as mandated from the state.
County department heads were notified of the 11 percent budget cut and were asked to make suggestions on where to cut the budget, but no replies were received by the auditor, county council members or commissioners.
Auditor Kay Chaffins was able to shift some money around in the Jail CEDIT fund and the regular CEDIT fund to help with the cuts. Another aspect that is helping with the budget situation is that the employee insurance quote for 2019 was much lower so the county realized about a $100,000 savings there.
The council members stressed that they would like to keep the three percent raise for employees in the budget, which is about $91,000. In order to do that, a minimum six percent reduction in each budget will help preserve that incentive.
After much discussion on the matter, the county council members unanimously voted to require the department heads to cut six percent out of their budgets or the council members will need to do the reductions.
The reduction information will need to be submitted prior to the council’s next regular meeting in December. The budget needs to be finalized by the end of the year.
