Madison Co. Capital Committee meets to talk county funding

JACKSON, Tenn. — The fiscal year for Madison County comes to a close in June, and the capital committee meets to discuss who gets what, and how much.

“The requests came in, and our committee’s job is to help allocate the money to buy those items with the allocation and the allotment that we get from the budget committee, to try and get the big puzzle of the budget to all kind of fit nice and neat together,” Madison County Capital Committee Chairman Jason Compton said.

Compton says departments typically request more money than what the capital committee can approve for them. In that case, the committee will need to make some cuts to make sure the capital needs will fit into the overall county budget.

“We needed to come up and trim that budget down several hundred thousand dollars to make it fit,” Compton said.

One of the biggest capital requests came from the sheriff’s office for patrol vehicles.

“We did have to cut the motor vehicle budget for the sheriff’s department down a little bit to make everything fit,” Compton said.

Compton says there are other solutions to problems the sheriff’s office could face because of that particular cut.

“There are some options on leasing vehicles as opposed to purchasing vehicles, but that is up to the sheriff on whether he would want to do that or not. That’s totally his decision, and I think he’d rather purchase than lease,” Compton said.

The capital committee has allotted about $2.7 million to county departments for projects and purchases while saving about $500,000 for emergencies.

The approvals from the meeting will go to the budget committee, and commission will then vote on the final budget next month.