County continues calculations

Loretta George/Tribune photo County Commissioners Allen Warren and Barbara Albright spent another day working on the Bourbon County budget on Thursday.

County entities have been crunching numbers recently to meet the Aug. 25 deadline for submitting their budgets to Bourbon County Clerk Kendell Mason.

All public entities in the county must have an approved budget by then. This includes the county commission, the City of Fort Scott, all schools including the community college, watershed districts, cemetery boards, fire districts and township boards.

County Commissioners have been working all week on their budget and Chairman Allen Warren and Commissioner Barbara Albright spent Thursday in another work session.

"We don't have a full time finance person, like some other entities. And I like to go line-by-line, so I'm slow," Warren said.

One of the larger portions of the county budget is the Road and Bridge Department.

Recently, one position was eliminated.

"We've already cut one person out, through job elimination. A grader operator, just a couple of weeks ago, due to the fact that we are changing each operators district. Each (operator) will pick up about 10-12 more miles of gravel roads to grade. There were eight operators, now there are seven." Warren said.

Salaries are a big part of the pie, but people are one of the county's greatest resources, Albright said.

Allen said that at this point there were no plans to reduce any more positions, but they will have to make some cuts in the requested amounts from some departments.

The commissioners will continue working on the budget through the weekend, Warren said, with the goal of getting all the information by the end of the weekend to the accountant, Terry Sercer of Diehl Banwart Bolton CPA PA.

"We won't know the total then until Terry Sercer keys in all the info," Warren said.

"We are trying to build a workable budget," Albright said.

The county pays Sercer about $100 per hour, which is the reason the commissioners are working extra time.

"So if we can supply the information, it will save the amount of time Terry Sercer will have to be involved," Warren said.

Last year Bourbon County had a budget of $10,378,56, Clerk Mason said.