Madison County budget process underway

MADSION COUNTY, Tenn. — It is budget season for just about everybody, including Madison County. We were able to speak with the Chairman of the Budget Committee, Carl Alexander, who says that it is really a year-long process. He told us where they stand now.

“Well the beginning of the budget process was actually the department heads presenting their budgets,” Alexander said. “So now we’re looking at that and looking at how many capital dollars we have to give against their asks.”

There was a main focus for Friday morning’s meeting. The goal was to make cuts in the capital budget if possible.

“We have funded capital at a really high rate for the last two to three years,” said Alexander. “We had taken care of most of the needs at that point, so this year we could be a little bit more picky about what we were going to try to fund.”

There was also some talk at the beginning of the meeting about the county’s debt service payment. Alexander says they have been very aggressive with their payments.

“A couple of our debts we can’t pay off early. A couple of them we can, and we do,” Alexander said. “What we’re looking at is we’ll be able to pay off JCM. That is going to free up some debt service money. So we are putting off as many major expenditures as we can until after that. Then that allows us to fund even more capital stuff without having to borrow money.”

Next week, they will call in different departments to go over their budgets individually.

The plan is to have the budget in front of the County Commission to vote on in June.

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