Ashland County commissioners adjust previously-approved 2025 budget

ASHLAND — County commissioners adjusted an already-approved $19.7 million spending plan for the new year at their Thursday meeting.

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“I think the public needs to understand this is not normal,” Bittle said.

He explained the changes came from two entities not getting their final budgets to the commission on time. Those were Dale-Roy School and the Ashland County Probate/Juvenile Court.

Bittle said he doesn’t recall a time when a budget has had to be adjusted following its approval in his tenure on the commission, which began in 2014.

Jim Justice, who was tapped to serve as the commission’s president in 2025, said commissioners started the budgeting process early in 2024.

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Bittle explained county departments are all required to submit a proposed budget in June, and then asked to make tweaks before the county’s final budget is set in December. Commissioners unanimously approved a $19.7 million budget for 2025 at their Dec. 20 meeting.

Why the late budget changes?

Bittle said Dale-Roy School submitted their final budget late due to wage adjustments. The school’s budget as approved by commissioners on Dec. 20 was $8,314,095.

The change county commissioners approved Thursday had the school’s budget set at $7,957,914.

As for juvenile and probate court, changes came to the previously-approved amounts for the juvenile court office, detention center, probate court, and felony delinquent custody contract service and maintenance. The table below shows previously-approved amounts and newly-approved amounts.

Office title	Previously-approved amounts (as of Dec. 20, 2024)	Newly-approved amounts (as of Jan. 9, 2025)
Juvenile court office	$595,340	$660,441.99
Detention center	$163,000	$195,000
Probate court	$158,885.20	$239,154.88
Felony delinquent custody contract service	$54,478.28	$19,500
Felony delinquent maintenance	$58,679	$30,747.94

“It unfortunately created an awful lot of work for this office (the commissioners) because that office did not get their budget in on time,” Bittle said. “They have plenty of time to do that. I don’t know what the failure was at that point.”

Judge Karen DeSanto Kellogg explained she’d submitted her projected budget in June, but didn’t submit her final budget before the commission’s budgeting deadline. Commissioners said the projected budget is what they’d approved in December.

When Kellogg spoke with Ashland Source, she said she didn’t have the projected and final budgets in front of her to compare and contrast.

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However, she said generally speaking, judges’ budgets can change based on the cases coming into their court, or due to staffing changes.

“I try to move with whatever my circumstances are,” Kellogg said.

Bittle also said judges have the ability to “order” their budgets.

That means the commission must fulfill their budgeting requests, unless commissioners can prove the request is “not reasonable and necessary,” according to an Ohio County Commissioners handbook. Judge Kellogg did this with her budget.

That action isn’t adversarial, however, both Bittle and Kellogg clarified.

“There’s no disagreement with the commissioners and the judge,” Kellogg said. “We do get along.”

This independent, local reporting provided by our Report for America Corps members is brought to you in part by the generous support of the Ashland County Community Foundation.