County focuses on cutting costs

By Jessica Coleman
Staff Writer
    Jackson County Commissioners and County Judge Dennis Simons have been in budget workshops in recent weeks, and other than some cost-cutting, Simons said not much has changed.
    “The budget is almost identical to last year’s budget,” said Simons.
He said the county lost 36 million in valuation, likely mineral valuation, a 2.3 percent decrease from last year.
    “Some other counties, DeWitt County in particular, dropped something like 30 percent,” said Simons, “So we’re fortunate in that ours isn’t too significantly different, but it is down some from the year before so there isn’t really room for any increase at all.”    
    Trimming little things that can wait off of this year’s to-do list and rolling it over onto next year’s has been the goal of the workshops.
    “We are trying to cut back on some of the expenditures that we had for some of the equipment. Some of the commissioners wanted road equipment, and we’re going to try to postpone that until the next year.  There were some other improvement things where we needed, like an update to a bathroom, and some carpet in some offices- it is not something that’s an emergency. It can wait, and we felt that next year it might be replaced in one or two of the offices.”
    Next year, some Jackson County plants start to come off of abatement, which will leave money in the budget to make some of the improvements that were pushed back this year. Simons said pushing some expenses back felt like a better solution than raising taxes.
    “Periodically, over the next 3-4 years or so, some of the others start coming off of abatement,” said Simons, “Its good because some of these capital improvements we can postpone a year, two years, there will be more revenue without having to raise taxes.  You can raise taxes if you want to spend all this money on your wish list, but I think the taxpayers look to us to be good stewards of their money. Its their money they’re asking for to provide services that they expect and need. You don’t want to raise taxes for frivolous things.”