(**New)County lawmakers approve 2014 budget with slight tax decrease...
County lawmakers have approved an approximately $230-million dollar, 2014 budget that includes a slight decrease in taxes from the current year's spending plan. It restores $250,000 of the $500,000 that County Executive Greg Edwards added for the Office for the Aging. That measure was the most hotly debated during the one-and-a-half hour long budget session last night. It was amended to the original 500-thousand dollars to provide services to ALL seniors on the OFA's waiting list. Frewsburg-area Democrat Tom Erlandson reminded fellow lawmakers that "politics is the art of compromise." Lawmakers did not restore the just over one-million dollar Inter-Governmental Transfer for the County Home. The new budget... which was approved 16-to-7... includes a full value tax rate of $9.13 per $1,000.