The Fulton County Budget Commission has just released its proposed 2018 Budget which starts the clock on the budgetary process to reach an adopted 2018 budget at the first of the year.

The $964 million proposed spending plan is slightly lower than the 2017 budget of $991 million and covers everything from libraries to criminal justice to health and human services.

Fulton County’s next District 4 Commissioner, Natalie Hall, released the following statement regarding the budget:

“The next District 4 County Commissioner will play a vital role in adopting the budget which impacts the lives of one million residents who call Fulton home. It also will impact many more who work in Fulton.

“I am in receipt of the proposed budget and as I have done in the past as the District 4 Chief of Staff, I am pouring over the priorities to ensure that no one is left out. A billion dollars is a lot of money and we must make certain we are responsible with the people’s money—it’s there’s not the government’s.

A key area I will be working on as we vote to adopt the final budget is that we have adequate funds to ensure a fair and responsible property tax assessment process. If we get that right on the front end, then we won’t see errors that caused those horrific spikes in assessments earlier this year.

Citizens can be assured that when I am elected, I will not need any tutorials on the 2018 budget. The past six years–as the late Commissioner Joan Garner’s chief of staff–I have been thoroughly engaged in preparing budget hearings, developing and revising balanced budgets for Fulton County each year—with $100 million surpluses. That will not change. We will do our due diligence as we always have for the benefit of ALL citizens in Fulton County.”