(12/07/11) It was standing room only in the Essex County Courthouse in Elizabethtown Monday night as nearly 150 people turned out for a hearing on the tentative 2012 county budget.
Twenty-three people spoke during the hearing, which lasted more than two hours. Not one person asked for additional cuts to a spending plan that proposed to increase the tax levy by 4.3 percent and lay off 30 county employees.
And as Chris Morris reports, every speaker called for the board to restore funding for contract agencies and do what they could to avoid job cuts, a move that would increase next year's tax levy. more
