County Approves Preliminary Budget

The Rabun County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the preliminary fiscal year 2014 budget Monday morning.

The total budget for fiscal year 2014 is down to just over 16.4 million dollars from nearly 16.9 million dollars last fiscal year.

The first payment on the Rabun Business Park had to be included in this budget, raising the development authority’s budget by over half a million dollars, according to numbers provided by County Clerk Debbie Jacobs.

Chairman Butch Darnell said that arrangements were made to keep that from adversely affecting the citizens of Rabun County, however.

“I have said all along that we would not take that payment out of the budget, but we would take the payment out of our reserve in order to not have to increase the budget or raise taxes.”

The budget for both fire departments and roads went down by a combined nearly seven hundred and nine thousand dollars.