During a special budget hearing Friday, Heiskell said, after initial cuts, she cut 4.8 percent across the board to reach a balanced budget. She had to trim almost $2.1 million from departmental budget requests to reach a bal-anced budget.
Employee salaries were unaffected by the cuts, Heiskell said.
One way she helped manage Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson’s $5.17 million budget — almost 26 percent of the total general fund budget — was to have the county road department perform maintenance on police cruisers.
The road department will change and align tires, perform oil changes and repair minor accident damage, county coordinator David Ashburn said.
The sheriff was contracting automobile maintenance with local service stations, Ashburn said, adding now Wilson will only have to pay for parts with the road department providing the labor.
Heiskell said she began working on the fiscal 2003 budget based on budget requests from her department heads, and those requests were much higher than last year’s requests.
The fiscal 2002 budget left a $38,000 deficit, Heiskell said. The budget would have balanced if the state had paid the remaining $40,000 promised as reimbursement for the Tri-State Crematory investigation, she said.
Catoosa County set its general fund budget at almost $1 million more than Walker’s; however, Walker has 600 more miles of road and a greater population than Catoosa, Ashburn said
Post a Comment