The Fannin County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to approve the 2020 Budget that lists the Grand Total Expenditures at $28,564,665 and Grand Total Revenue at $27,904,369.
“Commissioners, all of us have spent a lot of time going over this and I greatly appreciate that,” Chairman Stan Helton said. “The grand total for the budget, and I’ll say it slowly for you, is $28,564,665 and that is an increase from the 2019 budget, which was $27,710,456. That’s an increase in total spending of $854,000 or a total increase percentage wise of 3% over the previous year. We will be going into the general fund, if the budget is approved as it is, for $678,616 and the proposed budget had us going into the general fund $1,174,972. After reviewing and all the commissioner input we’ve been able to cut about, reduce, cut, about half a million out of that request.”
Post Two Commissioner Glenn Patterson discussed the importance of the budget stating, “It’s one of the most important things, of course, we do all year long and I hope that we took a second look at it and had time to maybe look at things that we maybe felt uncomfortable with and I asked that possibly we get some paper work that might help us and we’ve gotten that from the CFO (Robin Gazaway). I’ve also had a meeting with her, talking to her about it, and I feel good about it.”
Post One Commissioner Earl Johnson explained that while he no longer had an issue with approving the budget, he would like to receive more revenue figures in the future.
“As far as the budget itself, I have no issues with the budget,” Johnson said. “Reporting our revenues so that we can all keep up with the revenues in the departments, I mean just to me, is critical. … I just think it’s a very good gauge for us to know where we’re going when we have the revenues along with the expenditures.”
Patterson applauded Gazaway’s work with the budget stating, “It’s a very difficult position that she has and I appreciate her bending over backwards to explain things to me in a fashion that I can fathom it and feel good about it.”