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County Board changes budget-making process

The Knox County Board is putting all county departments and its own members on notice: the budget-making process is about to change.

The board this week approved the budget-making schedule for the 2019-2020 Fiscal Year — and, as Finance Committee Chair David Amor says, it’s not going to be done at the last minute anymore.

“The plan for the budget schedule is to move this up to give us more time than we’ve had in the past,” says Amor.  “We felt there was a real time-crunch when the budget requests were not received were…essentially not received into the middle of the summer.”

Now, Amor says, budget proposals will have to be turned in to the finance committee by Apri 26th, giving the county board time to have work sessions on them between May and October.

“This should give us the opportunity to meet with every department, and make sure that all departments are participating in the budget-building process,” says Amor, “so that we can get everything on the table and, hopefully, make the decisions that we need to make to bring in a balanced budget by the end of the year.”

Some County Board members, for example, recently expressed frustration when the State’s Attorney’s office asked to be allowed to hire another prosecutor, but waited until after the budget for the current fiscal year was done and approved to do so.

A final vote on that timeframe would still come in November.  The county’s fiscal year starts December first.

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