Dougherty Commission considers $104 million budget for 2026-2027 budget year

ALBANY – The Dougherty County Commission is putting the final touches on a budget proposal that totals $104.1 million, representing a 2% increase in overall spending from the current fiscal year while giving employees a 3% cost of living adjustment.

The good news for taxpayers is that the county’s spending package does not include a tax increase for the budget year that begins on July 1. To present a balanced budget package, the commission is using up to $6.1 million of reserve funds to plug any shortfall.

Broken down, the proposed budget includes $80.23 million in spending for the general fund maintenance and operations, a 3.3% increase over the budget year that runs through June 30. Another $255,764 is earmarked for capital improvement projects, a decrease of 53.1% from the 2025-2026 budget year.

For the special services district fund, which provides for fire protection, recreation and other services in unincorporated Dougherty County, spending is anticipated to increase by 2% to $10.73 million.

Also separate from the general fund budget is the county’s solid waste enterprise fund, which has a planned increase in maintenance and operations of 17.4%, to $5.67 million, and capital outlays being boosted by 122.5%, from $965,000 to $2.146 million.

That increase represents an investment in equipment that is needed to keep the landfill operating efficiently, Director of Solid Waste Services Seth Lassiter told commissioners during their Monday meeting.

“We’ve had some issues,” Lassiter, who came on board a few weeks ago, said. “We’re fixing infrastructure. Also, we’re trying to get the system online so we can monitor it while we’re not out there.”

The spending also includes improvements to the landfill’s gas system. The county provides methane that is produced from processes within the landfill to Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany for energy production.

Another need is global positioning system (GPS) technology needed to efficiently utilize space at the landfill, Lassiter said.

“The hope is making it a more efficient enterprise fund, is that right?” Commissioner Clinton Johnsohn said, to which Lassiter responded in the affirmative.

The solid-waste fund is the only money-generating operation for the county.

For the 2026-2027 budget year, the county does not anticipate transferring funds from the account to fund other parts of the budget.

While the act of producing a balanced budget calls for using up to $6.1 million in reserve funds, or general fund balance, as Assistant County Manager Barry Brooks referred to them, that does not mean the county will spend that much over the amount of revenue taken in for the upcoming budget year, Brooks said.

For the current budget year, the county used a $7 million figure for the purposes of presenting a balanced budget, but actually spent only about $200,000 of that amount, Brooks said.

“Typically, you never spend all you budgeted,” he said. “You have positions that are vacant longer than you anticipated (for example) … so you’re not actually spending the cash.

“The other side of the coin is you could have higher revenues than projected. We’re very conservative in budgeting revenues. That also reduces the need to use fund balance.”

Spending more than collected revenues year after year is cooking up a potential recipe for disaster, Commissioner Russel Gray said.

“It’s just math,” he said. “We don’t necessarily have to fund economic development. It’s a nice thing to do. I’m simply talking about operating our government and doing the core services we need. That’s our one job, to provide service delivery and charge appropriately for that.”

The county is facing a declining population while needing too provide the same services, Gray said.

Commission Chairman Lorenzo Heard said that Gray was one of the commissioners who last year promoted a jail overhaul that included $11 million for a replacement chiller unit

“We’re not going to spend $11 million,” Heard said. “We’re going to spend less and get just as good.”

On the topic of population loss, Commissioner Anthony Jones said that commissioners need to put their heads together with the city of Albany and Dougherty County School Board to discuss the future.

“We need to have a meeting to talk about this,” he said. “We’re not going to solve it this morning. We need to figure out how we’re going to move this county, city and school system forward.”

The commission’s Finance Committee plans to have a meeting to finalize the spending proposal before referring it to the full body for approval prior to July 1.