Perry County fiscal court advances first reading of 2026-27 budget

Perry County residents will see the next budget first in the places the county touches most often: roads, 911 service and the credit needed to keep operations moving. The fiscal court gave first reading to its fiscal year 2026-27 budget at its June 9 meeting, while also renewing a Whitaker Bank line of credit for FY 2027 and moving a FEMA grant request for Perry County E911 to buy five laptops for training, certification, skills sustainment and NG911 readiness.

The same agenda tied the spending plan to day-to-day county work. Magistrates also approved bill payments, invoices and transfers, and took first readings on road items for Kersey Lane, Nicholas Lane and Bee Haven Drive extension. For Perry County, that means the budget conversation is not abstract bookkeeping. It is linked to whether road work gets scheduled, whether emergency response equipment gets upgraded and whether borrowing costs stay manageable heading into the next fiscal year.

The court’s role reaches far beyond one budget document. Perry County government says the fiscal court oversees the county budget, county roads, county parks, public safety and other services, and the county lists Judge/Executive Scott Alexander, magistrates Don Miller, Ronald Combs and Clayton Church, and County Attorney John Carl Shackelford on its officials page. The county also keeps a public repository of fiscal court agendas, making the budget process visible before final adoption.

The budget still has room to change. Last year, the court took first reading of the FY 2026 budget on May 27, 2025, then adopted it on June 26, 2025, a roughly monthlong span that suggests this year’s spending plan can still be revised before the final vote. That timeline matters because the county is already balancing a long list of projects and recovery needs across Hazard, Viper and the Coal Fields Industrial Park.

Those pressures are visible in recent state-backed funding. In April 2025, Gov. Andy Beshear announced more than $8 million in Perry County investments, including $1.6 million each for Frontier Housing and Family Scholar House to build homes at Skyview, $4.2 million for a secondary water treatment plant at Coal Fields Industrial Park, $145,631 for a new community park in Viper, $460,000 for the Challenger Learning Center in Hazard and $30,000 for Hazard trail work. Separate state funding also put $856,100 toward Coal Fields Industrial Road and Trus Joist Lane resurfacing and $945,989 toward waterlines, pressure stations and lift station improvements, showing how heavily the county’s future spending still leans on roads, water and public safety infrastructure.