County balances budget without tapping reserves

County officials found sufficient savings to balance the county budget, according to documents released on Thursday.

The ending fund balance is 16.64 percent of operating expenses which covers two months.

“With the county manager’s guidance, extensive cooperation and assistance from directors, elected officials and the county manager’s office, we reduced expenditures to balance the budget, while incorporating essential supplemental requests,” according to the county finance department.

Balancing the budget required elimination or holding seven positions and reducing salary and benefits based on known retirements and new hires, according to the county.

Another source of funding came from contracts with existing vendors and removing one-time expenditures from the building maintenance department.

The budget has a net reduction in expenditures of $646,878 most of which comes from salaries and benefits.

Douglas County commissioners are meeting 10 a.m. Tuesday to update the March 26-29 budget hearings at the Historic Courthouse in Minden, located at 1616 Eighth St., Minden.

A hearing on the final budget is scheduled for May 20, where the towns of Gardnerville, Genoa and Minden will present their annual budgets.

The March 29 meeting ended with commissioners indicating they would prefer to wait until they had money before dipping $735,824 into reserves to balance the budget.

The county is working on a $67.6 million general fund budget, which is a 7-percent increase over last year’s adopted $63.1 million.

Property taxes are expected to account for $32.1 million of that with consolidates taxes coming in at a projected $16.6 million.

The general fund pays for all elected officials, human resources, community development. 

The county is budgeting for 616.29 full-time equivalent employees.