County makes cuts as they finalize budget for 2025

Lake County commissioners adopted the 2025 Budget Resolution during their meeting on Tuesday. The Commission had approved a first reading back on September 3rd, of a just more than ten-point-four-million dollar provisional budget.

A number of large cuts were made to that provisional budget on Tuesday including cutting $800,000 from the Road and Bridge Fund. That means that for the 2nd year in a row the county will do no overlay maintenance on any county roads in 2025. 

Commissioners also took $36,856 from the Buildings Fund for Repairs and Maintenance, as they will only budget to replace half the windows of the Courthouse. 

Additional changes included a reduction of $20,oo from the IT computer purchase line, and $5,000 from the Recreation budget, which means no cleaning of trees near the bike trail that were damaged by the derecho in 2022. 

Also cut was over $83,000 from the Weed budget, as the county will not do any spraying in 2025. They also removed $25,000 from their contribution to the LAIC, bringing the 2025 amount back to the amount given to the LAIC in 2024.

The total cuts from the provisional budget totaled about 1.8 million dollars, making the total county budget for 2025 $8,850,084. That’s roughly $400,000 lower than the 2024 budget.