Commissioners considering approval of $971 million Oakland County budget – The Oakland Press
The Oakland County Board of Commissioners are expected to approve the county’s $971.2 million fiscal year 2022 budget Wednesday night.
In July, County Executive Dave Coulter presented his $965.5 million recommended budget. Since that time, the board’s finance committee has held budget hearings with department heads and has made minimal amendments, totaling $5.1 million, to Coulter’s budget. That amended budget will be considered for board approval Wednesday during their final meeting of fiscal year 2021 with the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
That $5.1 million in fund balance is budgeted for one-time expenditures.
Coulter has said that the budget is focused on post-pandemic economic recovery and enhancing the well-being of county residents. Moving forward, the county executive wants the budget to be a true spending plan with expected expenditures matching expected revenues and fund balance only being used for one-time critical investments, not to balance the county’s budget.
To help achieve this, Coulter has recommended that expenses historically funded by one-time fund balance should be built into the general fund/general purpose budget up front including overtime costs for deputies at the county jail ($2 million), replacement of and upgrades to cyber security and other core IT infrastructure ($4 million), and shortfalls that have built up over time in the building liability insurance fund and information technology internal service fund ($4.5 million).
You can view the finance committee’s amended budget here: https://www.oakgov.com/mgtbud/fiscal/Documents/FY%202022%20%E2%80%93%20FY%202024%20Finance%20Committee%20Recommended%20Budget%20Book.pdf.
The fiscal year 2022 budget includes new investments in environmental sustainability, cyber-security, criminal justice reforms, a countywide incident management team, and for existing programs involving health and education including Health 360, Oakland 80, and the Clean Slate Initiative.
Since the pandemic began, the county has been allocated around $464 million in direct federal government assistance to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through the federal CARES Act ($219 million) and American Rescue Plan ($244 million)….
