Budget season kicked off this week in Athens-Clarke County. One number seemed to make the county manager worried.
Interim County Manager Brad Griffin presented an overview of his budget recommendations to the Athens Clarke County Commission at a meeting Tuesday. He focused on the big numbers—predictions for total revenues and expenditures. He says he’s worried by the county’s dwindling fund balance—which is sort of like a rainy day fund.
“We want to always be above a minimum, minimum, two month reserve. It should really be much higher than that, in my opinion. You can see these numbers whittling down. A lot of this is due to fairly significant infusions into the capital program.”
Griffin will propose a fund balance of around 18.9%, higher than the required minimum of 16.7%. Mayor Kelly Girtz will take the manager’s proposal and draw up his own by the end of April.
