Following a contentious meeting about serious issues with Jones County’s sales tax ratio, commissioners went to work finalizing the county budget.
All Jones County Commissioners were present for the Aug. 27 finalization of the budget. Commissioners set the county’s millage rate Aug. 20.
County Administrator Jason Rizner started the discussion with a list of priorities from Jones County Department heads for their requests. The commissioners held a budget workshop Aug. 16 to listen to all the requests, which added up to $4 million.
The amount of additional revenue Rizner estimated would be available for the requests was $700,000, which was the reason board members wanted to know priorities.
Each commissioner was emailed the list of prioritized requests of the department heads prior to the meeting and were asked to mark their preferences. Rizner then totaled the items favored by the board members.
None of the requests were marked by all five board members. The administrator read the items marked by four of the five commissioners and then the requests that received three votes. The ones with two votes were then discussed.
The largest single item that was approved was for additional pickleball courts and had a total price tag of $300,000. That request received votes from three commissioners.
At the end of the meeting, commissioners approved all the requests that received at least two votes with the exception of a splash pad that had a price tag of $200,000.
Their approved requests totaled $707,138.
At the conclusion of that discussion, Jones County Chief Financial Officer LaVita Crutchfield complied the data and read the budgets of each of the county funds with a bottom-line total of $29,343,925.
Commissioner Daylon Martin made the motion to approve the budget for the 2025 fiscal year. The motion was approved unanimously, and the meeting was adjourned.
