Thursday, August 21, 2014

Starke County Council Working on 2015 Budget

Published: August 21, 2014
By: Mary Perren, WKVI

The Starke County Council is in the process of crafting the 2015 budget. Once it’s finished, it will be published for taxpayer review. Council President Dave Pearman says that process is changing after this year.

“Next year they’re going to take the advertisement straight out of Gateway. Unfortunately it doesn’t leave the opportunity for the public to see the postings in the paper. Hopefully they’ll be able to use the Internet and access those items.”

Pearman says information about the county’s finances is a matter of public record and is available online.

“People can go to IN.gov and just type in “gateway” into the search,” Pearman said. “There’s a lot of information there now, and there’s a lot of prospective information. Five years ago they talked about being a lot more useful and adept. There are a lot of things the public can access if they want to know information from what people get paid to budget orders and things like that. We want to try to get people invited to do that so they don’t miss out when they don’t see the advertisements in the newspaper in 2015.”

You can also click https://gateway.ifionline.org/ to visit the state’s Gateway website.

Pearman adds he’s pleased with the budget draft the council is working on. He said it includes everything the county needs to support the new jail, which is set to open in the spring as well as the recent expansion of Starke County EMS. He said the proposed spending plan gets a lot of things done with a very small amount of money. Once the budget is finished it will be advertised and submitted to the state for review and final approval.

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