MOULTRIE — On Tuesday, the Colquitt County Commission adopted its FY25-26 budget. It is just over $26.4 million, which included an across-the-board increase for employees.

County employees — with the exception of constitutional officers, elected officials, and in-service retirees — will receive a $1 hourly increase, starting July 1. Dispatchers in the E-911 Department will receive an additional $1.50 increase, which includes a higher starting pay for new dispatchers.

Additional fund requests that were made by departments, offices and contractors include:

— The UGA Extension office requested $4,000 for a grill to replace the old one they have. They also requested additional cost-share funding for two positions. One was $3,000 for an intern position and the other was $5,000 for an educator position. The commission granted the requests Tuesday.

— The Public Defender requested $18,000 more for additional pay. County Administrator Chas Cannon said he asked the State what the rollover amount was from previous years and he was told it was $15,000.

“If we add the $3K to the $15K, it gives him $18K. That’s money that they did not use last year, so, if y’all are okay with that, we’ve added $3,000 for Public Defender,” he said at a previous budget meeting.

It was the consensus of the commission, at Tuesday’s meeting not to add the additional $3,000 to the budget for the Public Defender.

— The Clerk of Court requested $14,000 for a cloud-based software upgrade to the office’s system and it was granted by the commissioners.

“We’re going to get that moving, now. If so, we can add it to the General Fund. If it’s a one-time deal, we’ll probably use SLOST 19. You can purchase it under technology improvements,” said Cannon.

— The Livestock Barn, made a request for two 14-foot fans for the housing barn and two 16-foot fans for the show barn, and the commissioners approved them.

Cannon said at a previous budget meeting, “We’re okay with that if y’all are. We put $18K under capital projects. We can install them but we asked for a 10 to 15% cost-share from the livestock folks to off-set the purchase price. If we did that, it would be around $15,000 for four fans.”

Cannon told the commissioners, at the final budget meeting, that when he asked the people at the Livestock Barn, they did agree to a $2,500 cost share for the fans.

— The Department of Public Health requested a $69,000 increase in the County’s contribution and the commissioners approved an approximately $21,000 increase. This would bring the County’s total contribution to the department from $229,000 to $250,000.

— The Volunteer Fire Department requested additional funding for its proposal to have Station 12 manned with full-time fire fighters.

“If that’s something we want to move forward with, we can put $1.25 million in the SSD (Special Services District) and move the remainder of the capital purchases we talked about and fund them like we did the Sheriff’s Office block of funds,” Cannon said at a previous budget meeting.

He also said if they did this, they could roll back the SSD property tax for the first time in a few years. There was some surplus funding that would help augment the rollback, he said.

“So, bottom line, the SSD has sufficient funds to cover the proposal if agreed to by the board,” he added.

Cannon, who is also the area’s state representative, said legislators would work on making exempt any local government contracted service for fire services’ sales tax, in the next session of the Georgia General Assembly. He said the reason was that, if the VFA buys equipment for use for the County’s residents, they have to pay sales tax. This meant the County had to reimburse the sales tax.

“We’re sales tax exempt; why should we have to use tax-payer money to reimburse a sales tax item? It doesn’t make any sense, so we’re gonna try to get that taken care of,” said Cannon.

The commissioners agreed to the proposal Tuesday night, and Cannon said, they would pull the VFA’s contract agreement and refine it to include the new changes. The commissioners will look at the new contract and vote on it at the July 1 meeting.

— The Magistrate Judge requested a reimbursement per diem for travel. Commissioner Paul Nagy wanted to know how much. County Clerk Melissa Lawson said it would be $400 per month, a total of $4,800 for the year, for two judges. The commission denied the request at Tuesday’s meeting.

— The Humane Society’s initial funding request was for $175,000, which, Cannon said, was an increase of $50,000 from last year’s budget.

“If the board would commit to a $25,000 increase, we will fund-raise the additional $25,000. We pledge to do that,” County Clerk Melissa Lawson, who is on the Humane Society’s board, told the commission at the final budget meeting.

The commissioners agreed to the $25,000 increase to bring the organization’s budget up to $150,000.

Cannon told the commissioners, at the end of a previous budget meeting, that if they granted all of the requests, the County budget would still be about $200,000 to the good.

“And that should give us adequate coverage. Coverage throughout the budget year, pending anything with health insurance or law suits or anything like that we’re not expecting. We have some money in contingency to cover some of that stuff. And then, if we get FLOST approved by the voters in November, that should help us off-set millage fairly well in 2027 and in 2028,” he said.

In discussion, before the budget was approved with the changes Tuesday, Cannon told the commissioners that a lot of counties were raising millage rates and having three budget hearings. So, Colquitt County’s budget was easy in comparison.

“I mean, we’re to the good almost half a million dollars,” he added.