Morgan County appears to be in good financial health. The Morgan County Commissioners approved the county’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget during their regular meeting on Monday.
Commissioner Chair Ginny Fanning says overall they are very pleased with the county’s financials for the new fiscal year. “We do have a balanced budget in our general fund and we are appreciative of our department heads and elected officials who presented their budgets earlier last month and made it possible for us to be able to balance our budget.
Our revenue sources are all looking very good for the upcoming year. We did lower our fines and forfeits due to the Safe-T-Act and not knowing exactly what that will entail for the upcoming year, so we’re going to be monitoring that closely.
Fanning says the budget includes a three percent raise across the board as well as an additional five hundred dollars for county employees. Included in the budget is grant funding for the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office.
Fanning says the grant will allow for a deputy to assist workers with the Department of Children and Family Services. “The sheriff was able to get a DCFS grant for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and that’s going to enable them to have an, I’m going to call it a resource officer, for one of the deputies to travel with the DCFS person to go to homes and be a safety factor for them.
That is a new program that has been initiated and so we are very pleased that our sheriff was able to get involved in that and I think it is going to be a wonderful safety factor.”
Commissioner Brad Zeller reported that included in the budget is funding for the continued exploration of creating a human resources position. Fanning says the proposal is still in the exploratory stages.
“We have never had an H.R. position here, we do have resources through our risk management folks. So when we’ve had questions, we have had a person that we are able to go to and get the information needed. However, it would be a wonderful thing to have someone actually in-house able to do that. That position has not exactly been job description determined because there are some other things we are hoping that they will be able to do.”
Zeller said during the meeting that they are unsure if there would be enough work for a full-time HR employee need, so they are looking at possibly creating a position for someone who could multitask and take over some other, yet to be determined, duties that would justify creating a salaried position for the role.
In other business, the commissioners unanimously approved a number of final bills for FY 2023, as well as the reappointment of Jacob Meyer to be a Commissioner for the Indian Creek Drainage District.