The Greene County Board of Supervisors met Thursday for a budgetary workshop.

The Board spent most of the meeting discussing the proposed fiscal year 2020 budget for the secondary roads department. County Engineer Wade Weiss presented the expenses and projected $6,036,600 for the upcoming fiscal year. Some of the major impacts for expenses included a 3.5-percent increase in salaries and vehicle purchases like two dump trucks, a shop truck and a mini excavator. As for revenues, Weiss estimated there would be $6,855,865. Majority of revenues are from the rural and city property taxes, along with state funded programs like Road Use Tax Funds and Farm-to-Market Funds.

Weiss then mentioned that this spring work will be done to repair the county roads that were damaged by the wind turbine project with MidAmerican Energy on County Road P-46. He said the County received $958,626 in reimbursement funds to pay for the repairs.

The Board then discussed non-department funding requests. Vice-Chair Dawn Rudolph thought that some of the funding shouldn’t be increased for the next fiscal year because they had projects, like the courthouse, that they had to do because it was their “place of business.” The entities she suggested to keep at the same funding rate as the current fiscal year included the Bell Tower Festival, Greene County Fair Board, Greene County Historical Society, Jefferson Matters: Main Street, and Greene County Development Corporation. She also brought up Congregate Meals, saying that they shouldn’t depend on them to be a savings account if their equipment breaks. The total savings would be about $9,500. The Board decided to table their decision pending a historical breakdown of past funding for each entity to be presented at a future meeting.

Finally, Weiss presented the Board with estimates for upgrades and/or replacements for the elevators in the courthouse and the Mahanay Memorial Carillon Tower. The courthouse elevator would cost about $137,000 and the bell tower would be about $98,000.