From County contingency fund
By Stan Welch
Roads can be a lot like the weather. Everybody complains about them but nobody does anything about them.
Anderson County Council, at a special called meeting last Thursday, undertook steps to change that. Following a presentation by County Administrator Rusty Burns and Finance Director Rita Davis, Council voted to transfer $1.5 million from the county’s contingency fund to be used for paving and other road and bridge projects.
Ms. Davis explained t the Council that the funds would come from monies would not affect the current budget. The contingency funds, often called the rainy day fund, has grown by almost $4 million in recent years, due to policies and procedures implemented by the Council, and currently totals approximately $27 million.
In addition to the requested transfers for paving and roads, Council also approved reserving an additional $1 million to be set aside to match funds obtained from the Anderson County Transportation Committee. That committee has recently expressed its intentions to match any voluntary contributions by the county or the various municipalities towards paving projects that they present to the ACTC.
That decision could as much as double the amounts contributed, bringing an additional $1 million, or a total of $3.5 million, in funding to the county. When added to the amount already in the budget for roads and paving, the total amount thus allocated would be almost eleven million dollars.
Transportation Director Holt Hopkins assured District Two Councilwoman Gracie Floyd that the funds being allocated would not affect the individual Council members paving funds. She asked several times if those personal funds would be diminished.
The Council also approved the transfer of additional contingency funds for the possible acquisition of a building to be used to relocate the offices currently in the Bailes Building, which is in very bad shape, and for the acquisition of a new phone system.
Even with the additional transfers, the County’s contingency funds will remain above the prescribed level of three months’ expenses, a figure that the auditor insists be maintained.
