City Commission Holds Second FY 18 Budget Hearing

The Toccoa City Commission had their second hearing on the FY 18 budget at their meeting Monday.

In February, the department heads started preparing the budget and submitted it to the finance director and City Manager Billy Morse.

The finance director and Morse reviewed those budgets in March and prepared an FY 18 proposed budget for the commission to review.

Morse described what the FY 18 budget includes.

“The proposed budget for the City of Toccoa is $34,512,615,” said Morse. “It does not include any property millage rate increase.”

During the hearing, Ron Wade addressed the commission with concern about how much money is in the budget for the golf course.

“The budget this year is almost half a million dollars,” said Wade. “It’s actually $476,000. Not being privy to the actual results of this year, all I can go by is 2016 audit where the golf course only made about $108,000. As a taxpayer, I would like some kind of assurance that eventually this will turn into an operation that operates in the black.”

Morse explained that the goal for the golf course is for it to be self-supporting and says that there are new ways that they plan to bring in revenue.

“Everything is happening quickly and new up there,” said Morse. “Revenues from last year are up. The Reflections Event Center- we’ve got 22 events booked, so we think that’s going to be a revenue generator as well as we got new management for Ping’s Restaurant so again, time will tell. But our plan is for that to be a self-supporting enterprise fund.”

The FY 18 budget will begin July 1.