Muskingum County Commissioners hosted their annual budget hearing to discuss the 2019 budget proposals.

“We went through the formality of having our required budget hearing,” Muskingum County Commissioner Jim Porter said. “We ask all of the departments to file a budget with us by a certain date, which is obviously July, we compile those numbers and we have a hearing.”

Currently, the budget requests are outnumbering the revenues by roughly $4 million.

“We more or less call this their ‘wish list,’” Porter said. “It’s what they’re asking for and then we’ll critique it here this fall when we actually do the budget.”

The budget for the 2018 fiscal year was $33 million. The requested total from all of the departments is roughly $37 million.

Many things are factored into the 2019 budget and some of the increase requests can be accredited to renovation, salary increases and operating costs.

“I anticipate a big change,” Porter said. “We don’t have to come up with $4 million because we don’t have the revenue to cover that. So, the 2019 budget requests will be cut tremendously because we don’t have the revenue stream.”

The commissioners typically begin working on the budget around November and through December. The budget is adopted in April 2019, but Porter said the commissioners are hoping to have it done in January if not sooner to give the departments an idea of what to expect.