Talking budgets does not seem all that ‘Christmasy’ but that is a big part of the county business this time of year regardless of the Christmas season. As mentioned earlier we did have a county assessed valuation loss of $6,765, 440.00, mostly from loss of market and property value in the oil and gas business. In a nutshell this relates to revenue falling short of expense. Since there is little way of increasing revenue the only way to balance a budget is to reduce spending. This was our approach and every department in county general shared in expense reduction. One of the more sizeable reductions was a reduction from $25,000.00 to $15,000.00 to KCEDF.  We fell short of balancing the 2011 budget by $18,682.00 but the auditor feels there is a good possibility of under spending the 2010 budget -so it could come very close. Revenues were at $1,713,106.00

and expense closed at $1,731,106.00.  The fund balance for the general fund for 2011 is budgeted at $1,016,158.00 down from $1,034,840.00 in 2010 but still up from $827,995.00 in 2009.