NC Commission Ponders Spending Perpetual Care Funds

Interest income to Natrona County is accruing in its perpetual care fund.  The fund represents one-cent dollars set-aside to accrue interest and they've grown to close to700,000 thousand.

Commission Chair, Ed Opella, would like to see that money applied to needed maintenance, but because they're one-cent funds the commission must bring the decision to the public.

"You don't do that without a public hearing, because that's basically what the one cent committee allocated that money for; to do maintenance and repair on one cent projects, well, the county doesn't have a lot of one cent projects."

but they do have maintenance needs and that's where Opella wants to see the money channeled; One project would replace the roof on a Road and Bridge Department building, another would replace the aging elevator in the Old Courthouse....

"These are projects that need to be done but we don't have the money to do them so this will be a good source. And again, we're only gonna use the interest, the $676,000 will remain in there gathering interest. We want to inform the public of how we're doing it so they don't think we're using the one cent monies for a slush fund."

Right now the money's are in at least two different accounts and he proposes combining them. They total around 2.9 million. He says the conversation will go back to work session, probably next week. Opella hopes to hold a public hearing on the question by months end.