Oldham County fiscal court approves 2025 clerk budget and sets maximum deputy salaries

Oldham County Fiscal Court voted to approve the Oldham County Clerk's proposed 2025 budget and set the maximum salary expense for deputies and assistants at $1,679,294 during a special early-January meeting.

Amy Alvey, Oldham County Clerk, presented the budget packet and said the personnel-services section reflects a 3% increase for her staff. "My salary is set through statute," Alvey said, and she used the current statutory rate to calculate her portion of the budget. She also noted the retirement contribution for the clerk's office and for the fiscal court will decrease as of July 1, which is reflected in the proposal.

Alvey described other line items, including contracted services for equipment maintenance and back-office systems, funds for elections (budgeted at $10,000 for 2025), and a capital outlay category for equipment purchases. She explained a high "refunds" figure in the packet is a flow-through item related to delinquent tax-sale deposits: participants must post deposits that appear as both income and expense. Alvey said the clerk's office expects to collect $31,428,850 in 2025, make mandatory distributions of $27,979,278, and that the office's gross receipts would leave roughly $3.45 million before operating expenses; anticipated excess fees for the clerk's office were listed as $635,357. The clerk's office's internal expenses were budgeted at about $2.8 million.

Magistrates asked clarifying questions about a small COVID expense line of $500 (kept for potential future needs such as hand sanitizer and masks) and whether costs for the clerk's new office move were included; Alvey said small items will be paid from the clerk's budget while larger move-related expenses are in the fiscal court budget. She also said the clerk's staff totals 24 employees across three locations and announced that longtime deed-room employee Nancy Donner plans to retire within about six months.

The budget had been reviewed by the finance committee at the prior court meeting in December and was moved, seconded and approved by voice vote without any recorded opposition.

The court also approved a separate motion setting the maximum salary expense for deputies and assistants in the clerk's office at $1,679,294; that motion was moved, seconded and carried by voice vote.

Less-critical details: Alvey said she had budgeted $10,000 for election expenses in 2025 (down from $30,000 in the previous year) and described a payroll-transfer accounting practice that borrows from 2024 to cover early-2025 payroll and then reimburses the prior year, which she characterized as a wash.