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Budget Balanced, But With Slight Tax Increase For Knox County
Taxes will be up for Knox County property owners with Monday night's approval of a 43 million dollar 2011-2012 fiscal year budget.

County Board Chairman Greg Bacon says the 2% property tax increase is a difficult but necessary evil for a balanced budget.

"It's hard to not raise taxes in a time like this, but we did a little bit and stuff like that," Bacon said. "We don't want to cut services."

Bacon says Knox County is only one a few West Central Illinois counties with a balanced budget, which he says he's proud of.

He tells WGIL that even without 4-point-3 million dollars in state funds, the county is able to retain 100-percent of their employment.

"We haven't laid anybody off yet, and we havent cut hours yet. We did last year, but we gave everything back."

Bacon is referring to last years 4-percent pay increase to all Knox County employees. He says that figure quickly shrunk to 1-percent once the state fell behind in their payments to the county.

However Bacon says that previously planned increase in pay from last fiscal year's budget has been distributed to each employee.

At this time, those contract figures for the now approved 2011-2012 fiscal year budget are still being negotiated.
11 29 11 by Newsroom
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