The Washita County Board of Commissioners approved the budget allocations for the various county offices during their July 1, 2019, regular meeting. The commissioners, working with the county’s excise board, trimmed almost $50,000 from the county officers’ requested allocations.
The Clerk of the District Court’s budget request took the biggest hit, as the commissioners cut $15,000 from the proposed budget. Court clerk Lynda Vermillion had requested $203,599.42 for FY2019-2020, which included the hiring of one additional employee for her office. Half of the payroll, she said, would come from the county budget and the other half from the state, if she could acquire approval. The commissioners decided to not add additional staff and cut the proposed $15,000 from Vermillion’s budget request.
The county assessor’s office took a similar hit, and for the same reason. Assessor Krystle Uecke had requested $13,249 to hire a part-time employee for her office. The excise board, during their morning meeting, discussed the importance of maintaining consistency across the departments, and recommended that no new employees be added in the courthouse during this fiscal year. The office’s budget did grow by $33,612 for the new year, which was attributed to an accounting change as one of the deputies in the office was being paid from the budget for visual inspection. Uecke told the excise board two weeks ago that she felt the employee in question was not doing enough work in that department to legally justify payroll coming from visual inspection and asked that the payroll allocation be moved into the assessor’s general fund budget allocation. The visual inspection department budget decreased by $15,683 as a result of the shift.
Other departments receiving less of an allocation than originally presented to the excise board last month include the county audit, which was originally listed at $49,000 and reduced to $34,494, the district attorney’s office, which received $4,700 of a $5,400 request, and the county election board, which was approved for $88,431.92 of a $94,931.92 request. The election board cut represents the approximate cost of a countywide special election, which is not expected to be needed during this fiscal year.
In total, the commissioners allocated $2,674,274.99, cutting $49,955 from the requested $2,724,229.99.