County finalizes 2023-24 Budget

Steve Cornelius, Commonwealth Journal, Somerset, Ky.
·3 min read

Jun. 28—With their first attempt at putting together a large county government budget, newly elected Pulaski County Judge-Executive Marshall Todd and newly appointed county treasurer Crissa Morris thought it would be best to attack the county's nearly $45 million 2023-24 budget in a series of smaller one-on-one sessions with magistrates instead of the traditional public group budget workshop.

"With us both (Todd and Morris) being new in our positions, we felt it would work better to meet with the magistrates in smaller groups and go over each line item of the budget," Todd stated.

According to Todd, the budget was worked on in groups of two magistrates or less over a period of a couple of months to finalize their 2023-24 county budget. Under the Open Meetings Act, the Fiscal Court is permitted to conduct private meetings in numbers less than a quorum — two magistrates or less — as long as they are not avoiding the open meetings requirements of the Act. In addition, the law permits serial meetings "between individual members where the purpose of the discussions is to educate the members on specific issues."

According to Todd, the five magistrates hammered out their most recent yearly budget over a period of nearly 75 days, which included several non-quorum meetings with Todd and Morris.

Fourth District Magistrate Mark Ranshaw stated that he had several lengthy meetings with Todd and Morris going over every detail of the budget, and he was pleased with the overall outcome of the budget. One year ago, Ranshaw was the lone vote against approving the 2022-23 budget.

The county government's 2023-24 budget included $1 per hour raise for all county employees. The 2023-24 budget was set at $45,839,986, which is almost $3 million up from last year's budget and over $13 million higher than the county's budget in 2021-22.

The 2023-24 budget allocated $23,985,170 in the General Fund; $6,883,245 in Road Fund; $6,043,080 in the Jail Fund; $173,000 in the Federal Grant Fund; $5,875,591 in the Fire Protection Fund; $2,276,700 in Emergency Dispatch (911) Fund; $553,000 in Local Government Economic Assistance Assistance Fund; and $100,200 in Industrial Development Fund.

Within the General Fund budget was $384,320 allocated for the County Judge Execute Office; $262,319 for the County Attorney Office; $796,875 for the County Clerk Office; $3,060,000 for the County Sheriff Office; $150,880 for County Coroner Office; $183,700 for Magistrate Salaries and Other Costs; $176,550 for PVA Office; $174,572 for Treasurers Office; $190,290 for Occupational Tax Office; $113,620 for Total Office Personnel; $180,000 for Office of Elections; $400,000 for SPEDA; $1,206,00 for Courthouse Maintenance; $461,8000 for Judicial Center Maintenance; $1,323,250 for Total Emergency Services; $294,172 for Animal Shelter; $1,352,465 for Solid Waste; and $503,825 for County Parks.

Contact Steve Cornelius at scornelius@somerset-kentucky.com.