Franklin County approves 41 million dollar budget

        Franklin County Commissioners have now adopted their budget for the upcoming year.

The county’s budget is just over 41 million dollars – local taxpayers will pay for about 9 and a half million dollars of that through property taxes.

That’s a tax increase of about 5 percent.

There were very few members of the public at the hearing but the three who did speak all opposed to any tax increase.

There was a move by Commissioner Pinki Jackel that would have cut about 100 thousand dollars from the budget by using money returned to the county from constitutional officers.

Because county employees are now required to pay 3 percent of their salary into their retirement the county expects to get about 80 thousand dollars back from the constitutional officers this year in unspent payroll.

The problem is that while the county may expect the money – it doesn’t mean they are going to get all of it so the board decided not to move forward on that cut because there were too many unknowns..

The commission did agree to cut the amount it is giving the city of Apalachicola for meals on wheels services by half from over 21 thousand dollars to just under 11 thousand.

The other half will go to the Wakulla County which now provides Meals on Wheel services to the eastern end of Franklin County all the way to Carrabelle.

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