A startling new figure was tossed out at the Cobb Board of Commissioners retreat earlier this week: a projected Cobb budget deficit of around $30 million.
The commissioners met in Austell Monday and Tuesday to get an early start on the fiscal year 2019 budget, a month into fiscal 2018, which they had to balance with $20.8 million in contingency funding.
They discussed a wide variety of budget priorities and options, but made no decisions. The rise in the budget deficit projection is attributed to an increase in health care costs, among other expenses.
“We’re basically nine or ten months ahead of where we usually are when it comes to developing a budget for this county,” Cobb Commission chairman Mike Boyce said in a statement Tuesday. “Today we’ve done something that hasn’t been done in the past as far as having something in October for a fiscal year that starts ten months from now.”
Boyce said the information and perspectives offered at the retreat will assist in formulating a budget proposal by early next year.
He said he will schedule town hall meetings around the county next spring, similar to what he did this summer with a proposed property tax millage rate that was ultimately rejected by the commissioners.
The Cobb government fiscal year budget runs from Oct. 1-Sept. 30, and commissioners set the millage late late in the budget process, in August.
Commissioners voted not to raise the millage rate this year, including East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott and JoAnn Birrell.
