The Warren County Commissioners are inching closer to settling on 2021’s budget.

The spending plan will be before the commissioners on Wednesday for formal consideration and was discussed during Monday’s work session.

SPECIFICS

Eric Hern, the county’s finance director, said he plans to bring a series of budget changes to the commissioners to consider Wednesday prior to voting to approve the plan.

“I wouldn’t say,” he said, that any of the items are “significant.”

Commissioner Ben Kafferlin said the board would “walk through” those changes during Wednesday’s meeting.

He said Wednesday’s discussion will also include the last action on CARES Act — federal COVID-19 relief funding. That funding — about $3.5 million came to the county, with the lion’s share going to business and non-profits in the county — comes with a Dec. 31 deadline by which the county has to disburse it.

A request from a fire department, potentially a county-related IT request, county staff time to administer all the requests, potential liquid fuels issues and municipal earned income tax and local services tax losses will be up for debate Wednesday, as well, regarding the CARES Act funding.

Commissioner Jeff Eggleston noted that if more time was needed to consider the budget that the vote could be kicked to the second meeting this month, set for Dec. 23.

“There’s other things we could allocate money for that we might want to have a few more days to review it,” he said.

Kafferlin said the budget could be tabled on Wednesday but wouldn’t prefer it.

“I would like to keep the goal the same of getting it done this week,” he said, “(so we can) get done with the budget and move on to other things including the holiday.”