Delaware County commissioners and staff reviewed and approved multiple line-item reductions to department budgets, focusing heavily on postage and freight accounts and other small adjustments to lower overall totals as they refined the 2026 budget.

Why it matters: Line-item reductions across many departments change departmental totals and affect the county’s consolidated budget; postage, while small per-line, aggregated into meaningful reductions across funds.

Staff and the board walked through department-by-department adjustments that included postage and freight reductions and other small-line edits. Examples recorded during the session include reductions to postage and freight in the county clerk’s office, county assessor, courts, treasurer and other offices. Specific cited adjustments included a $1,005.64 reduction in the assessor’s postage account, and a $1,009 reduction in the courts’ postage and freight line. Across the items read during the session the auditors’ running total of line-item adjustments produced repeated updated subtotals (for example, “total number of adjustments, negative 113,710, making it 1,273,824” and later larger consolidated totals for countywide adjustments).

Commissioners and staff noted some recurring themes: annual postage spending historically has come in well under what had been budgeted (one participant said the county spends about $100,000 less on postage every year than budgeted), which allowed shifting budgeted amounts among departments. Staff asked departments to track actual postage usage next year for more accurate budgeting.

The board also handled small salary-line corrections and the reclassification of a recording-secretary stipend into salary for a single position, moving $5,000 into a salary line from a stipend; the office requested the auditor consider pulling funds from an ineligible standard-deduction fund if needed to restore stipends.

No policy-level changes or ordinances were adopted during this review; the adjustments were line-item refinements that staff recorded for inclusion in the next budget draft. Commissioners indicated they would reconvene with updated totals and continue adjustments as needed.

Looking ahead: Staff will document postage and small-line spending and provide updated departmental totals at the next reconvened session so the board can finalize the consolidated budget.