Gratiot Sets Priorities Beyond the Basics
After the necessary expenditures in its yearly budget have been met, Gratiot County’s Board of Commissioners entered into a meeting this week to decide priorities for spending what little money it may have left over.
No. 1 on the list was the hiring of a maintenance supervisor, said chairman Jeff Anderson.
Second was keeping the .339 mills the board voted on last year – through P.A. 88 – to help fund Greater Gratiot Development and the MSU Extension office.
The board is expected to renew the millage next month. Voter approval is not needed.
Several years ago, Anderson said, the board had reduced the maintenance personnel to one full time and one part time employee.
“This left one person for the courthouse, the jail, the annex, animal control, the health department,” he said.
One regular maintenance task involving the gutters was either over looked or forgotten and the damage resulted in several thousand dollars of repairs, he said of one example.
“(Residents) have told us that the court house is important,” he said. “When small repairs are left undone, big problems result.”
In a restructuring of the budget, Anderson said he believes the county will be able to hire a maintenance supervisor for about $60,000 or $70,000 a year, including benefits.
One way the county will be able to do that, may be through the expected approval of the governor’s plan to have local governmental employees pick up more of their insurance costs.
If local governments do that, the governor has promised, they may get more money from the state.
Currently, the county pays $1.3 million for insurance. Employees pay about $24,000.
If the governor’s proposal passes the legislature, single employees in Gratiot can expect to pay about $100 more per month than they are paying now, he said.
As for the millage renewal, it had the unanimous support of the board, he said, noting that the two agencies were deemed of critical importance to the county.
The millage generates about $314,000 a year.
Commissioners also discussed allowing an intern for the IT department, Anderson said. The cost for that would be minimal.
Pay raises, he pointed out, were also included in the list of priorities.