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BACKUS - Cass County Board voted Tuesday to adopt budget committee recommendations to cut enough items from the proposed 2015 budget to allow for a $198,651 contingency fund to handle emergencies.

That contingency fund is still well below the $351,810 contingency in the 2014 budget.

To balance the budget and create the contingency fund, the budget committee recommended and the board approved deleting several requests from the proposed 2015 budget.

For 2015, the board recognized an $84,600 increase in the county's health insurance cost and added $3,200 to replace an emergency services computer, but tabled a request for an additional assistant county attorney position, deleted an added jailer position and recommended using capital projects fund balance to pay for a sheriff's records half-time position to work on archiving digital records.

The board also deleted Working Together Coalition's request for $125,000, Cass County Housing and Redevelopment Authority's request for $30,000, a request for an added maintenance worker, a Minnesota Rural County Caucus request for $4,000 membership fee and a county attorney request for an added clerical position.

The budget committee has recommended, according to Administrator Robert Yochum, that Working Together Coalition seek matching funds, then return to work with Health, Human and Veterans Services committee members to determine whether the county can allocate some money from its existing budget without an added levy request to help fund the group.

Yochum also said the budget committee will consider giving a one-time loan rather than grant to Cass County Housing and Redevelopment Authority in the amount of their request.

Capital fund balance will be used to pay for the maintenance work requested, because that worker is assigned to capital projects.

Funding for Minnesota Rural Counties Caucus and the added county attorney clerical position will be dependent upon whether individual departments can find enough money within their existing levy allocations by dropping some other expense, Yochum said.

Chief Financial Officer Larry Wolfe reported Cass County's proposed 2015 levy rate is the lowest of eight area counties at 30.529 percent.

The other county rates include Crow Wing, 34.639; Hubbard, 38.66; Aitkin, 44.448; Itasca, 56.81; Beltrami, 59.251; Morrison, 59.756; and Wadena, 89.704 percent.

The county board will hold a public hearing on the budget and levy at 6 p.m. Dec. 2 at the courthouse in Walker before adopting a final budget and levy at the regular meeting at 9 a.m. Dec. 16 at the courthouse in Walker.

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