- Wakulla County Commissioners have voted unanimously to put a freeze on new hires.
- They also voted for the audit committee to start meeting monthly starting January.
- Watch the video to see how these changes impact public safety in the county.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
"This is a storm just a different type, but this is not something we're gonna fix today," David Edwards, Wakulla County Administrator said at the meeting.
County commissioners have approved a motion that will correct a multi- million dollar mistake to the county's budget.
The move comes after the the Wakulla County Tax appraiser made the mistake back in June that went unnoticed until October when he alerted commissioners of the error.
That landed the county into a $2.4 million dollar deficit.
it's millions of dollars the county was expected to see in revenue.
The largest chunk of that was going to help push public safety. Now that that money isn't coming county leaders are agreeing tightening the belt will be best for now.
"Lets stop that, because that's continued spending that we can put the breaks on now and then we can continue to evaluate we can close out our fiscal year for last year make sure we know where our final numbers are going throughout the year going forward."
Here's a breakdown of that that looks like:
Nine positions with the sheriff's office and 9 with the fire department have been placed on hold. The rest of that positions were for non-public safety related position.
That saved the county a total of $1.6 million dollars, but there's still a $700,000 dollar gap.
"It slows our plan down, no doubt about it but were not backing up were still gonna be as safe as we were last week and then well continue to evaluate the ability to fund those positions."
The next commissioner meeting is November 6th at 5pm.
