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PIKEVILLE, Ky. — The Pike County Fiscal Court held a special called meeting Thursday to discuss the upcoming fiscal year and hold a first-reading of the budget.

Similar to meetings held in the past few weeks, the treasurer presented the budget to the court and Pike County Judge Executive Bill Deskins and the magistrates went through it line by line to see if anything needed to be changed, added or taken out.

“We’ve tried to use the same figures as we’ve had in the past three years on stuff coming in,” said Pike County Deputy Judge Executive Herbie Deskins. “There wasn’t any place that we thought we would have a revenue shortage. In 2016, we had that big decrease in the assessment of property by the state that we didn’t know about. That sort of took us back a little bit. But, everything is technically correct and it’s about a $36 million budget.”

Almost everything in the budget is the same as previous years. However, property owner’s will see a 10-percent decrease in their taxes.

“That’s what we’ve proposed,” added Deskins. “And a five-percent raise for employees. We think that’s fair. We’ve been pretty good stewards of the money that we’ve had this year. We wanted the employees and the people in the county to share in that.” 

The court is pleased with the budget submitted Thursday.

“It’s a pretty good budget. These have been hard times in the mountains, but we’re holding our own and making the best of what we’ve got and tried to go forward.”

The final budget will likely be passed on June 19th.