As part of their Tuesday, Feb. 18 meeting, Bulloch County commissioners were expected to approve budget amendments with added expenditures totaling more than $10 million in the county government’s general fund, as well as $5.6 million and almost $1.2 million in two different sales tax funds.

This regular, public meeting was set to begin at 8:30 a.m. in the North Main Annex Community Room, the commissioners’ usual meeting place.

Local governments frequently adopt budget amendments, often to reassign unexpected revenue or money saved in certain departments to cover new or higher than expected costs for other items. But the amendments to the Fiscal Year 2025 budgets reflect larger than typical added costs.

As indicated in the memo to the commissioners from the county Finance Department – which is headed by CFO Kristie King – the largest causes for these increases were two storms, Hurricane Helene and Tropical Storm Debby. FY 2025 runs from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025, so the September and August storms occurred earlier this fiscal year.

A detailed list of the budget changes, also supplied to the elected commissioners with Tuesday’s agenda, shows many lines in the general fund labeled “Reallocated expenditure budget – Vacation cashouts.” However, these don’t actually affect the bottom line, as explained in the memo.

Instead, those amounts were originally budgeted to the county’s Personnel Services office but have now been reassigned to each department that had employees cash out apparently unused vacation hours in November 2024. The total shown in parentheses as subtracted from Personnel Services is $205,985, the sum of the smaller amounts subtracted from various job categories.

“There is no net effect of this reallocation,” the memo states, for that part only.

Storm recovery costs $10M-plus

However, that’s not the case with the storm recovery efforts, which have brought a large net increase in spending. But the county government is seeking partial to complete paybacks of its debris removal and road repair costs from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its state-level Georgia counterpart, GEMA.

The general-fund “adjustment will also allocate the previously approved funding for debris removal services and related monitoring that are underway to address the damage caused throughout the county by Hurricane Helene,” the memo states. “This will result in an increase to the expenditure budget of $10,005,000, the majority of which is expected to be reimbursed by FEMA and GEMA.”

Separate paragraphs in the memo explain changes in the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST, 2019 fund and the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or T-SPLOST. But one budget amendment resolution will cover all the changes, if commissioners approve.

The T-SPLOST fund adjustment reflects a spending increase of $5,647,008.

“Some of this is related to rescheduling some projects that were planned to occur in a future year, but the largest piece of the adjustment is to allocate the previously approved funding to address the damage to infrastructure caused by Tropical Storm Debby,” the memo states.

The breakdown of T-SPLOST additions includes $3.75 million for road and drainage repairs related to Tropical Storm Debby, $1,422,317 for road projects moved up that had been scheduled for future years and to address higher expected project costs, and $474,691 for equipment purchase rolled over the previous year, and also higher-than-expected equipment costs.

SPLOST adjustments

But the $1,192,787 adjustment to the fiscal 2025 budget for the “SPLOST 2019” (meaning the current tax authorized in a 2019 referendum) fund doesn’t have much to do with the storms. The largest portion is $619,230 for public safety projects, followed by $326,608 for solid waste disposal projects, $94,049 for recreation projects, $77,125 for judicial facilities projects, $47,875 for community facilities projects, all rolled over from the previous year, and $27,900 for an additional information technology purchase.

The budget amendment was part of the multi-item “consent agenda” portion for Tuesday’s meeting. So it could be approved, along with nine other “consent” items, with a single motion and vote and no further discussion.

Another major spending item in the “consent agenda” list is the purchase of a 3,000-gallon tanker-pumper truck at a price of $498,407 from Fouts Fire in Milledgeville for the Bulloch County Fire Department.

But as noted in a memo, the commissioners had actually pre-approved the purchase of a tanker-pumper at a cost not to exceed $525,000 back at the Nov. 7 meeting.

So this is the confirmation of that purchase at a lower actual cost. Commissioners Chairman David Bennett signed the purchase contract Feb. 4, and the fire truck is to be delivered with 365 days, the memo states.

Ordinance amendments

Only four items were listed under “new business” for this meeting, but two of them are proposed amendments to county laws.

One, from an earlier discussion previously reported in detail, is the proposal to amend the ordinance that sets rules for how the commissioners’ meetings are conducted and outlines the order of business. The original reason for looking at this was Commissioner Nick Newkirk’s quest to allow public comments on new business items before commissioners vote on them.

Public comments proposal

Instead of having separate “new business” comment times, the draft amendment developed by County Attorney Jeff Akins follows a simpler, compromise idea that emerged from the previous discussion. The only “public comments” period during a regular meeting – other than on issues where separate hearings are required – would be placed before the consent agenda, old business and new business segments.

Akins’ draft proposes a few other changes to the ordinance, in keeping with his previous comments that some updates were needed. For example, it adds a segment for commissioner and staff comments to the order of business. This had been the practice for years but wasn’t listed in the ordinance.

Tuesday’s other proposed ordinance amendment is an update of the county’s rules and regulations for body art studios and body artists – in other words, business people who do tattoos and piercings. The county’s update would reflect recent revisions in state regulations by the Georgia Department of Public Health, and the ordinance is enforced locally by the Bulloch County Health Department.