Pennington County commissioners voted Sept. 19 to unassign several reserve accumulations that staff had been holding as departmental set‑asides and to remove three specific department reserves from the FY2026 provisional budget. County staff said the move will consolidate unobligated cash into the general fund and give the board greater transparency when reviewing capital needs and budget supplements.

The board first approved a motion to unassign reserve accumulations that county departments had been tracking off the books; the motion carried with one nay and one abstention. Commissioners debated how to treat multi‑year departmental set‑asides, with some saying the current practice of tracking accumulated reserves outside the formal annual budget made supplemental appropriations harder to review and led to unplanned expenditures.

Following that action, commissioners approved a motion to remove three identified reserve accumulations from departmental budgets and present them as part of the general fund: $70,000 in IT, $145,000 in the jail budget (for a transport bus), and $100,000 in fire. Staff said those amounts would no longer be shown as assigned reserves but would remain part of the county’s cash position and would be considered within the broader capital and operating budget process.

Staff noted this change raises the county’s unassigned general fund balance (on the current provisional numbers) by several percentage points, improving the reported unassigned balance from about 11% toward the board’s stated target range. Commissioners said they expect departments to include planned capital needs explicitly in future annual budgets rather than relying on off‑books reserve accumulations.

As a next step, the board asked staff to provide a five‑year capital plan that aggregates known upcoming capital costs and shows how those items would be funded under different scenarios.