Commission adds $650k in revenue to reach budget goal

LACONIA — Belknap County Commissioners held an all-day work session on the building of the 2015 county budget Friday and came up with a revised proposal which will meet the goal set by the county convention of reducing the proposed increase in the amount to be raised by property taxes from 10 percent to 2 percent.

Last week convention Chairman Frank Tilton called for reducing the amount to be raised in taxes for the proposed $27.3 million county budget by $1.1 million and asked the commissioners to come up with $400,000 in reductions after the convention identified over $700,000 in salary and health insurance cuts.

Commissioner Dave DeVoy said that the commissioners on Friday accepted the convention's proposed payroll and health insurance budget cut numbers, which amounted to a $749,000, but added back $335,000 in expenses, most of which came through increasing the contingency line by $510,000.

DeVoy said commissioners made that change in contingency in order to keep department budgets lean but allow for unknown or unanticipated projects and costs without resorting to the need for supplemental appropriations.

Revenue projections were increased by $750,000 by commissioners, with $650,000 of that coming in the nursing home budget, which commissioners discussed at length Friday with Nursing Home Administrator Mathew Logue.

Commissioners DeVoy and Hunter Taylor (Commission Chairman Richard Burchell was not present) were told by Logue that because state funding through the Department of Health and Human Services is uncertain at this time it was pretty much a guessing game as to what the county can expect.

That prompted commissioners to say that they think that the legislature should press for full state funding at recent levels and not pass along tax increases to the county.

The increased revenue projections, minus the $335,000 in added expenses, allowed the commissioners to come up with a $400,000 adjustment in the proposed budget.

The revised budget proposal will be submitted to the county convention when it meets at 6 p.m. tonight at the Belkap County Complex. The meeting will be preceded by a 5 p.m. meeting of the convention's Executive Committee at which commissioners will present requests for about $60,000 in budget transfers to pay the county's unpaid legal bills for 2014.

Commissioners decided Friday to drop two proposed capital projects; $60,000 for replacement of windows at the Belknap County Courthouse and $75,000 for a time and attendance system for the Belknap County complex. Also cut from the budget was $27,600 from the IT Department for an electronic medical records project for the nursing home.

Other reductions included $45,000 for electricity and $14,000 for fuel at the nursing home.

Among the increased expenses is $39,923 for the Corrections Department to hire a consultant to produce a program for a new community corrections plan supported by commissioners.