The Dorchester County Council enacted a budget for FY 12 that is almost 16% lower than FY 11.  The spending plan includes an 8 cent increase to the property tax which councilmembers say will partially compensate for the $4 million loss in the county’s highway user revenues brought on by state budget cuts. The most significant cut comes from the capital budget which is reduced by 93% from $10 million to $600,000.  The adopted budget includes $2.5 million in recurrent expenditure reductions through 5 day employee furloughs and staff reductions due to early retirements and layoffs.  These reductions were adopted in the past to address the temporary loss in highway user revenues.  When the state made the reductions permanent, the county was forced to move from a temporary strategy to a sustainable strategy of reductions and revenue increases to address their own structural deficit.

For more details on the county budget, please refer to the Adopted Budget Message FY12-Dorchester County