If the Cannon County Commission passes the 2015-2016 fiscal year budget proposal during their August meeting, they will have to pass the recommendation made by the Cannon County Budget Committee on how to fund the county general portion of the budget in two separate regular meetings. The Cannon County Budget Committee met again Tuesday night and discussed the various taxes needed to fund the expenditures of the proposed budget. Over the past couple of months worth of meetings the Budget Committee cut a lot of the budget requests from the various County departments which is always much more than most of those departments spent during the last fiscal year. Then step two was to go back through the budget and make more cuts comparing what each department was budgeted during the 2014-2015 fiscal year and what they spent. Many departments during the last fiscal year spent less money overall in their department than what was in their approved budget which was passed in 2014. Only a handful of departments were approved by the budget committee for increases. A majority of the increases were because costs of employee insurance increased or state mandated salary increases. After cutting as much as possible, the committee then had the task of trying to figure out how to fund the budget. The Committee wanted to steer away from increasing property tax, so they took a look at increasing the wheel tax and earmarking it for the County General Fund. With each $10 increase bringing in $130,000 and the budget needing the funding of a little under $200,000 to come out in the positive, it was decided on to make a recommendation to the full Cannon County Commission to increase the Wheel tax $20 bringing an estimated $260,000 based on the number of cars that belong to Cannon County residents. If the Cannon County Commission passes the wheel tax to help fund the budget, they will have to do it again on second and final reading in September. This would raise the wheel tax from $74.25 to $94.25. This only pulls the County even in their budgeted numbers and does not give any type of cushion to the General Fund Balance.
