Waldo County’s budget committee is asking county commissioners to further squeeze their proposed 2026 budget.
At a budget meeting on Tuesday, the committee spent three hours discussing the commissioners’ most recent budget proposal which amounts to a 17% increase over 2025. That proposal, released on Jan. 16, was itself a pared-down version of the budget proposed in December, which called for a 36% hike and was met with public outcry.
But this new round of cuts didn’t go far enough to satisfy the committee, which voted to ask the commissioners to try again. The commissioners were not immediately able to say how long it would take but will propose a deadline for the new draft by the end of the week.
“It’s going to be tough,” said Commissioner Kevin Kelley. “But we’ll go back to the table.”
The budget committee did not ask the commissioners to reduce the budget to a certain amount. But several committee members mentioned that they would like to see an increase of less than 10%.
Until the committee votes on a new budget, the county must operate using 80% of its 2025 budget, said Kari Hunt, Waldo County’s finance director.
