The County Commission passed a resolution Tuesday to continue operating under the 2007-08 budget until the new budget is approved. The new fiscal year begins July 1, but it will probably be August before the commission votes on the new budget.

A budget workshop has been scheduled for July 17, which will give the Finance Department time to close out the books for the current year. The county’s budget for the current year was $15,164,859 and has been amended throughout the year and is now at $15,275,574.

The county departments and nonprofits presented requests totaling $15,342,396 at the May budget hearings. That amount does not include any increases requested by the non-profits and new non-profit requests, which would add $142,485 to the budget.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the commission approved a motion made by Commissioner Larry Anderson to look at a scaled back budget for the coming year.

Anderson said the commission needed to go “back to square one.”

That means taking out money for new vehicles, pay raises and new hires, and funding the non-profits at the current year’s amount with no new funding for non-profits. He also requested taking out all the gasoline requests.

“We can look at what we’ve got and then add back what we can,” said Anderson. “We’ve really got to work on this budget.”

Some county departments and non-profits noted the increase in gas prices were affecting their budgets.

Anderson thought some departments were requesting too much of an increase for gas while others probably had not budgeted enough.

The county can track how much gas each vehicle and each department uses through purchase records at the county garage where the county vehicles are re-fueled.

The county takes bids each June for gasoline and diesel, but the bid is actually for the cost of hauling the fuel from Knoxville to the Highway Department. County Finance Director Brian Tallent said the county pays the distributor the “rack” or wholesale price for the fuel, but the price varies with each load.

Last July the county paid $2.2772 per gallon for diesel and $2.3640 for gas. The delivery a couple of weeks ago cost $4.126 per gallon for diesel and $3.4053 for gas.

The Highway Department buys and manages the gas supply for the county. In addition to the cost of the gas, the Highway Department adds a charge to help cover the cost of maintaining the pumps and operating the garage. Each department is charged for the gas purchased at the garage and then writes a check to the Highway Department.

Tallent said for normal day-to-day use, the county departments only purchase gas at the county garage, however departments such as the Ambulance Service and the Sheriff’s Office have gas cards to use if they are traveling out of county or if they need to refuel before they can get back to the garage.

Tallent said he would prepare the budget with the requested changes before the workshop, which will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 17 in the J.P. Kennedy Annex.

mia.rhodarmer@advocateand democrat.com | 337-7101