Knox earmarks surplus expenditures

Knox County officials have put together a shopping list for how they would like to spend what is expected to be as much as $6 million in surplus revenues, with roughly half the money targeted for health care, employee raises, new patrol cars and software upgrades.

Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett said there’s “nothing fancy” about the designations and noted that they are “basic needs” rather than “wants.”

“I think the departments understand that I’m serious when I say that we need to be fiscally responsible,” the mayor said. “They’re not coming to me with outlandish proposals. They’re coming to me with fiscally responsible ones, unlike what they’re doing in Washington where the politicians continuously spend more money than they’re taking in.”

As it stands, the county’s finance department on Tuesday said the general fund should get between $5 million and $6 million more than what officials projected last year when they put together the budget for fiscal year 2013, which ended in late June. The mayor’s office has earmarked just under $3.1 million of the money for purchases, and expects to put the rest into the reserves.

The Knox County Commission will discuss the proposal during this month’s meeting, and decide whether to approve the expenditures.

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