The Greene County Budget & Finance Committee got an early start on the 2013-2014 county budget during a three-hour meeting on Tuesday.

The committee has, in recent years, started a review of the budget after receiving figures for state and local revenues.

"Our goal is this year to try to get some kind of budget to the County Commission so it could be acted on by June 30," Mayor Alan Broyles said. "If the department heads don't get a budget in to us, we're at a stalemate."

The originally-set deadline for departmental budget requests has already passed, but several department heads have not yet turned them in, Budget Director Mary Shelton reported.

Mayor Broyles said that he set a new deadline for noon on Friday.

Department heads that do not meet this deadline will forfeit the opportunity to make requests, and the Budget & Finance Committee will set their departments' budgets, he said.

Shelton estimated that the county currently has about $3 million in General Fund savings. (The General Fund is the fund out of which most departments are paid.)

For the start of this fiscal process, Commissioner Robert Bird requested that County Trustee Dan Walker present updated sales tax receipts to the commission.

Within the past nine months, from the end of June 2012 to the present, sales tax receipts have totaled $12,428,000, Walker reported.

This total, he said, is half a percentage point, or $61,000, below what it was in the same nine months of last year.

"I don't remember but one time where we've come up with a minus on sales tax, which was a couple years ago when building and everything was down," Walker said.

"It's not going to change a whole lot one way or the other," he added, as caution against budgeting for a sales tax increase in the coming year.

"There's not much, if any, growth here, folks," Commissioner Bird agreed. "In my opinion, the sales tax is going to remain fla, and that's what we should count on."

With no solid revenue numbers in hand and only half the proposed expenditures for 2013-2014, however, the committee limited Tuesday's action to reviewing and "tentatively approving" those budget requests that have so far come in right at, or under, their 2012-2013 budget.

These included:

* Election Commission at $361,650, nearly $23,000 less than the current fiscal year because of having one fewer major election;

* County Buildings at $285,023, down nearly $500;

* Accounting and Budgeting at the same as this year's total of $383,763;

* Purchasing, at this year's $120,906;

* County Commission, at this year's $51,171;

* County Attorney, at this year's $154,906;

* Planning, at this year's $76,166;

* Inspection and Regulation, at this year's $176,689;

* Rabies and Animal Control, at $169,116, about $600 less than the current year's budget;

* Soil Conservation, at this year's $90,494; and,

* Veterans Services, at $72,802, up $49 for the increased cost of data processing services.

In other business, the committee approved interbudgetary transfers between line items in the County Trustee's budget totaling $3,285 to cover additional costs needed for a computer server and for clerical personnel to travel to a seminar.