2021 Bannock County Budget Presentation

The 2021 Bannock County Budget has been presented and approved! It was quite was to get to this point, but I think we did a good job.

The budgeting process began early in the spring with departments putting together their individual requests. Those requests then went to the Clerk’s office for review and refining. Once the Clerk was comfortable, they submitted a recommended budget to the Commissioners.

Once we received the budget we had a few days to review it along with the departmental justification for their requests. The departmental justification binder I received was about three inches thick and the budget binder was at least an inch.

After reviewing the budget, we then held multiple meetings with the individual departments and the Clerk’s office (which includes auditing) to go through the budget line by line. I think we looked at over 1,000 lines of budget! There were a lot of good discussions with a lot of give and take on all sides.

It was tough as department heads looked at telling their people there would be another year without a salary increase. But we felt it important in these uncertain times we did our part to be fiscally prudent. We also held the line on not creating a lot of new positions. The Jail, Sherrif’s office, and the Prosecutor’s office each asked for multiple new positions. But, they were willing to work with us as we reduced their request to amounts that fit within the overall goal of the budget.

A highlight of the budget was the Governor’s COVID relief funds. We had several options as to how we could use the funds. In the end, we chose to apply it directly to property tax relief. We chose this option as it was a direct benefit to the taxpayer by reducing the amount of property tax the County would request.

In the end, preparing the County’s budget is a tremendous undertaking. It took a lot of hours by a lot of different people to put together. It was a great team effort and I am proud that we were able to provide a tax decrease for the County’s portion of the citizen’s tax bills.

Below is the presentation I gave today to present the budget for approval.