News release

The entire Fiscal Year 2018-2019 CAO Recommended Budget document is now available online at the County’s webpage, www.inyocounty.us, offering the public an opportunity to review the proposed $100,393,501 spending plan coming up for possible adoption in September.

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Publication of the budget was made possible by many weeks of analysis, calculation, research, meetings, planning, writing, and review by staff Countywide, and in particular the painstaking efforts of the Inyo County Budget Team consisting of Auditor-Controller Amy Shepherd, Sr. Budget Analyst Denelle Carrington, and County Administrator Kevin
Carunchio.

The Recommended Budget is the 10th, and last, prepared and presented for consideration by Carunchio, who retired August 10, 2018, after 13 years with Inyo County – the last 10 as County Administrative Officer.

The document he has prepared details the revenue and expenditures being proposed for each of the County’s 19 departments and 130-plus budget units for the 2018-2019 Fiscal Year, which runs from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019. (On June 19, the Board of Supervisors adopted a modified version of the 2017-2018 Board Approved Budget to serve as the Preliminary 2018-2019 Fiscal Year Budget until a final version could be presented and approved this fall.)

The CAO Recommended Budget will be considered by the Inyo County Board of Supervisors when the County’s Budget Hearings commence during the Board’s regular Tuesday, September 4, 2018 meeting in the Board of Supervisors Chambers, in Independence.

Carunchio acknowledges in the 2018-2019 Introduction & Summary, or Budget Message, that by September 4, Acting CAO Clint Quilter “will have had time to become familiar with the ins and outs of this budget, and can and should be expected to recommend any modifications he believes appropriate or desirable.”

He added, “Of course, at the end of the day, and as always, it is the Inyo County Board of
Supervisors’ sole purview and authority to approve what is or is not included in this or any other County Budget.”

The entire budget clocks in at approximately 650 pages. For lighter reading, Carunchio’s Budget Message once again offers a comprehensive breakdown of the Fiscal Year 2018 -2019 CAO Recommended Budget, within the context of the “big-picture” fiscal challenges and opportunities faced by the County this fiscal year.

The Budget Message includes discussion of the why’s and how’s of requested expenditures, and whether department requests have made it to the CAO Recommended Budget unchanged, with modifications, or not at all; the differences between the Department Requested Budget and the CAO Recommended Budget are highlighted in detail. It includes concise information about the county’s income
(from taxes, fees, and other sources) and a breakdown of expenses by function (i.e. Public Safety, Roads, Public Assistance, Public Health, General Services, etc.), and notes the continuing hard work of many Department Heads to reduce expenses, the ongoing successes of Service Redesign, and exciting projects that can be realized this fiscal year.

For those new to the Budget process, the Introduction & Summary offers this information in easy-tounderstand language.

The Budget Message also acknowledges the hard work that went into crafting the Fiscal Year 2018-2019 CAO Recommended Budget. In the document, Carunchio offers his thanks and praise to every County Department but in particular to Carrington and Shepherd, whose contributions to this and past fiscal years’ budgets Carunchio said cannot be overstated.

A hard copy of the Fiscal Year 2018-2019 CAO Recommended Budget is available in the Board Clerk’s Office at the County Administrative Center in Independence, 224 N. Edwards St.

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