CAIRO — Grady County commissioners voted Tuesday to approve a $16 million budget for fiscal year 2021.

Revenues and expenditures increased by $210,000 from the preliminary budget commissioners approved in September. Of that, the fund balance has been dipped into for an additional $94,500 to cover new expenses.

The remaining $115,500 in additional expenditures since the preliminary budget was approved was covered by shuffling money between departments.

County finance director Holly Murkerson noted that while the final budget asks for more fund balance than the draft did in September, the end tally is still 51% less than what the county needed to cover the FY2020 budget.

Included in the changes from the September draft budget is a 25-cent per hour raise for county employees.

In years past the county would grant a flat percentage raise for all employees based on salary, but the additional cash headed for workers’ pockets this year is based on time worked. Murkerson said the new cost of living adjustments will have a greater impact for the county’s lower-paid employees.

“If John makes $100,000 a year and I make $20,000 a year and he gets a 1.5% (raise) and I get 1.5%, he gets a lot more than I do because its based on his salary,” she said.

“As (County Administrator Buddy Johnson) says, ‘if I buy a gallon of milk it costs me the same thing as if you buy a gallon of milk.'”

Murkerson noted that the changes actually helped the county save some money on salaries compared to what was on the draft budget.

The budget commissioners approved is perfectly balanced — exactly $16,524,300 in both revenues and expenditures.

Johnson noted that the finalized budget, while not approved until fairly late in the year, will be up to date when fiscal year 2021 begins next month.

“In two weeks I’m going to start using this budget,” he said. “If I would have asked (the commissioners) to approve it back in October … we were just going to do amendments on it all year adding to it.”

Other changes came to the structure of the budget, such as including separated salary lines for different positions at the Grady County Sheriff’s Office, which Murkerson said will help better track how taxpayers’ money is being used.

Grady County has never structured its budget like it has this year, “but it’s a new day and time,” Johnson said.

“You make changes because you need to progress with what’s going on in life,” he said. “You need to progress with technology, you need to progress with what’s happening and you need to pay attention. This budgeting is no different.”

Businesses that refuse to change outdated practices “go stagnant or die,” Johnson said.

Separate from the county’s primary budget is a $12 million special fund budget for items including taxes for specialized purposes, unique funds that are not directly controlled by the county and state grants.

Though the county can’t use the money in the special fund for anything except its designated purpose, they are still responsible for managing the budget.

“A lot of times people thing Grady County is small, we only have a $16 million budget,” Murkerson said. “Well, no we don’t.”