Cape Girardeau County commissioners accept preliminary budget

County Auditor Pete Frazier presented a preliminary budget to the Cape Girardeau County Commission during its regular meeting Thursday, Dec. 14.

"What you see before you is a summation presentation of revenue and expenditures that are projected for 2024 for the major funds which I present each year," Frazier said. "This is a preliminary operational budget. What it does is, it provides us the opportunity to perform business up until we do our final budget, which we're projecting to be presented on Jan. 8."

The county had an actual revenue budget of $13,649,533.91 as of Monday, Dec. 11, and Frazier estimated income of $13,284,614 for 2024. An estimated $9.2 million of that would come from sales tax.

The commissioners also approved a quote for sample ballot lookup solutions from Pro West.

"We had a call with them to develop a sample ballot lookup application where a voter could go on and look up their address ... the voter would be able to type in their address and see exactly what ballot they will get on election day," County Clerk Kara Clark Summers said.

Summers said there had been some confusion among voters as to which districts they live in and which elections they can vote in. The lookup application should inform the public about the answers to those questions, she added.

The application's development cost would be $5,631.24. This would come from the 5% election services fund and would not touch general revenue, Summers said.

The commissioners rescinded a quote from Jonesboro, Arkansas-based Arco Towers & Contracting as well. They had approved the $46,330 quote for a used communications tower during their Monday meeting.

However, they decided to roll the cost in with general Emergency Operations Center construction costs instead of doing it separately.