The Daily Record
Commissioner Praises County Budget
By SHAUN SAVARESE
Of The Record Staff
Harnett County Commissioners unanimously passed the county’s 2016-2017 fiscal year budget Monday. Commissioner Abe Elmore, former mayor of Dunn, lauded it as “one of the best budgets (he has) ever seen.” The tax rate will remain the same at 75 cents per $100 valuation.
The budget includes $23.5 million for Harnett County Schools, $6 million short of what was originally asked for and $2.5 million more than the current allocation with a $1,000 supplement for teachers. The county anticipates $3.8 million from the distribution of additional sales tax allocations among counties and projects county sales tax revenue to increase by 13.68 percent. There is an unassigned fund balance of 17.9 percent of the county’s annual budget.
After County Manager Joseph Jeffries submitted the proposed budget without fund balance appropriation or tax increases, Harnett County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jim Burgin expressed his satisfaction with the group’s effort.
“I want to thank staff for all of their work, department heads and everybody that has been involved and especially our management team. You guys did a wonderful job on this, it’s one of the easiest ones that I’ve been a part of in many years,” Mr. Burgin said.
The chairman reminded citizens that documents and figures are available on the “Open Government” section of Harnett County’s website, www.harnett.org. “ If you have a question about how money is spent in Harnett County, you can have that information and we will try to make it available,” Mr. Burgin said. Although commissioners were expected to vote on the budget June 20, Chariman Burgin suggested the board go ahead and vote.
Commissioner Elmore spoke about his impression of the budget See Budget, Page 3 Budget
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and his pride in the board.
“I’ll be 84 years old in just a few more weeks and I have seen a lot of budgets,” Commissioner Elmore said. “… I’ve never seen a budget put together better than this one.”
He spoke about talking on the phone with Finance Director Kimberly Honeycutt twice, for more than an hour at a time to discuss figures and account numbers.
“I believe it is one of the best budgets I have ever seen …. This county is going to move towards economic development… . I think it has been properly funded and we have not raised the taxes …. I think it’s great and I’m proud to be a part of it,” Commissioner Elmore said.
“We have collected … in revenues $92,701,000 through April as opposed to $90,411,000. In revenues we are up $2.3 million,” said Chairman Burgin, who went on to say the county has increased total revenue by almost $8 million and Ms. Honeycutt said the utilities department has paid off so far “around $7 or $8 million.”
“Our utilities fund balance is sitting at $34,577,000 and the solid waste is sitting at $2,364,000,” Chairman Burgin said. “We’ve got some departments that are really doing some good things and we need to be proud of them.”
