In spite of concerns from some local leaders, the Cass County government has a new financial plan in place for the upcoming year.

In a 6 to 1 decision, the members of the Cass County Board of Commissioners approved the budget for the 2017 fiscal year during their meeting Thursday night in Cassopolis.

The plan allocates $16,236,507 for the government’s operations during the upcoming fiscal year, an increase of nearly $300,000 compared to the budget passed by commissioners the previous fiscal year, according to the draft budget distributed during Thursday’s meeting.

While the proposed budget called for a $787,092 deficit, the commissioners approved the transfer of $460,000 from the county’s budget stabilization fund and $327,092 to balance it, a requirement under state law.

Cass County Administrator Karen Folks has worked alongside the commissioners and various department heads over the last several weeks to create and finalize the new budget, Folks said during the meeting. The board and department heads met in several work/study sessions throughout the planning process in order for the commissioners to receive clarification for individual budget items — something that has not been done in previous years, Folks said.

“This has been a very thorough, deep-dive kind of process for the development of this budget,” Folks said.

Using the findings from those hearings, with some minor adjustments, the county leaders developed the budget that was passed Thursday, Folks said.

In order to attempt to close the initial budget deficit of more than $982,000, the county adjusted some of the allocations toward fuel, printing and binding materials and certain equipment costs in order to bring that amount down to the $787,092 total in the final budget, Folks said — a move that was not embraced by everyone in the commissioner’s chambers Thursday.

“We cut our fuel budget 25 percent, with the reduction in gas prices and such, and it just got cut again,” said Undersheriff Richard Behnke during the hearing. “We were told that gas prices got back to $4 again. … That is a concern that I have.”

However, another potential price saving measure — scaling back on the winter hours of operation in order to reduce payroll — was not recommended by Folks. In spite of potentially reducing the deficit by nearly $200,000, the administrator said that implementing such a drastic change on relatively short notice would not be a wise idea.

Cass County Independent Employees Association President Tina Butler told the board she was pleased by the administrator’s recommendation to not cut employee hours.

“In the future, if that is considered, that is not something I find acceptable,” she said. “I think there a lot of other things that could be looked at as cost-saving measure other than cutting people’s hours and affecting them detrimentally.”