Camden County

FY2026 · Adopted · Budget basis

The adopted FY2026 budget

The Board of Commissioners adopted the FY2026 budget on June 24, 2025 — $85,810,554 across all funds, balanced in every fund by construction. “Balanced” includes a planned use of $10,710,272 of accumulated fund balance and retained earnings; the General Fund’s share of that draw is $718,817. Budgeting basis: modified accrual for the General, Special Revenue, and Capital Project funds; full accrual for the Enterprise funds.

Adopted budget by fund — FY2026 FY2026 Adopted

SPLOST 9 is the new 1% sales tax beginning July 1, 2025 under an $85M referendum. SPLOST 8’s FY2026 budget is funded almost entirely from accumulated balance ($6,336,285 of fund balance against $500,000 of miscellaneous revenue and $0 of new sales tax) as the 2019 tax winds down.

Revenues by source — all funds, FY2026 FY2026 Adopted

The $10,710,272 fund-balance line is budgeted use of prior-year balances, not new revenue — it is shown as its own line everywhere on this page, never blended into taxes or charges. Excluding it, budgeted new revenue is $75,100,282.

Expenditures by category — all funds, FY2026 FY2026 Adopted

General Fund detail — FY2026 FY2026 Adopted

One summary table in the adopted budget book (p. 98) omits the $7,920,401 Insurance line from its General Fund category list while including it in the total; the complete category table is shown here — see the disclosures section. By department (Resolution Exhibit A), the largest lines are Emergency Medical Services $8,126,646; Sheriff’s Office $6,978,367; Employee Health Insurance $4,661,094; Corrections $4,039,443; Special Appropriations $2,852,197; Risk Management $2,054,134; Public Works $1,879,953; and Joint Development Authority $1,000,000, plus 36 smaller departments and offices. The four insurance-related department lines sum to exactly the $7,920,401 Insurance category.

Other funds & the fund-balance draw — FY2026 FY2026 Adopted

The Unincorporated Tax District applies $1,485,532 of prior-year insurance premium tax to reduce unincorporated fire-service costs. Solid Waste spending includes $500,000 of funding for the closure/post-closure liability and $208,500 of debt service.

Budgeted use of fund balance, by fund: SPLOST 8 $6,336,285 · GA Transportation $1,643,472 · ARPA $907,667 (spending down the remaining 2021 federal award) · General Fund $718,817 · Unincorporated Tax District $660,498 · Solid Waste $159,732 · Curbside $101,653 · Shared Assets $100,000 · Drug Abuse $38,200 · Impact Fees $33,948 · Opioid Settlement $10,000 — total $10,710,272.

Projected ending fund balances, June 30, 2026 Projection — not actuals — General Fund $14,163,090 · Capital Projects $18,849,446 · Special Revenue $476,627 · Enterprise $620,160 · Total $34,109,323 (beginning $44,819,595 less the $10,710,272 budgeted use). These are budget-book projections; the audited June 30, 2025 balances are in the next section.

Source: FY 2026 Adopted Budget — Camden County Board of Commissioners, Camden County, Georgia, July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026 — adopted June 24, 2025. Read the FY2026 Adopted Budget (DocumentCenter)

FY2025 · Audited · Governmental funds (modified accrual)

Audited FY2025 — the governmental funds

The FY2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report was audited by Mauldin & Jenkins, LLC (report dated December 23, 2025; unmodified opinions). On the fund basis — the near-term, spendable-resources view — Camden County’s governmental funds took in $71,824,953, spent $65,330,650, and ended June 30, 2025 with combined fund balances of $43,238,756. The General Fund itself ran a $2,984,590 net decrease for the year (revenues $45,119,216 vs. expenditures $45,743,428, after transfers), ending at $14,075,471.

Revenues by source — all governmental funds, FY2025 FY2025 Audited

Expenditures by function — all governmental funds, FY2025 FY2025 Audited

The $662,143 of “debt service — principal” is lease, subscription (SBITA), and financed-purchase principal — the county has no bonded debt (see obligations below). Revenues exceeded expenditures by $6,494,303; with $327,026 of net other financing sources, the net change in fund balances was +$6,821,329, from restated beginning balances of $36,417,427 to $43,238,756.

Fund balances by fund — June 30, 2025 FY2025 Audited

The ARPA fund is $0 because its $3,210,352 of assets are fully offset by liabilities (unearned revenue $1,231,525 + accounts payable $1,978,827); its FY2025 revenues of $4,481,470 were fully spent or transferred. By composition, the $43,238,756 is: Restricted $29,072,550 (capital outlay $27,891,104; judiciary/court programs $674,324; public safety/law enforcement $507,122) + Assigned $90,735 (capital outlay) + Unassigned $14,075,471. The General Fund’s entire $14,075,471 is unassigned — equal to 29.1% of General Fund expenditures plus transfers out, against the county’s own 25%-of-budget policy threshold.

Source: Camden County, Georgia Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2025 (Mauldin & Jenkins, LLC, auditors) — governmental fund statements, pp. 24–26. Read the FY2025 ACFR (DocumentCenter)

FY2025 · Audited · Government-wide (accrual)

Audited FY2025 — the government-wide view

On the accrual basis, Camden County’s net position rose $5,939,528 in FY2025, to $146,578,633. Governmental activities gained $10,639,612; business-type activities fell $4,700,084 — almost entirely a landfill-accounting story, explained below. Beginning balances were restated by −$769,470 (see disclosures), so the year-over-year increase in the reported total is $5,170,058.

Fund-basis and government-wide totals differ by design — governmental revenues are $71,824,953 on the fund basis vs. $71,806,606 government-wide (the $18,347 difference is the ACFR’s own reconciliation item), and General Government is $15,875,501 on the fund basis vs. $20,732,053 government-wide, which folds in internal-service/insurance activity and depreciation. Every table on this page carries its basis label; the two bases are never mixed in one display.

Net position — June 30, 2025 FY2025 Audited

Capital assets, net, total $104,519,325; total liabilities are $26,792,237 and total assets $173,631,994. Business-type net position is the Solid Waste Fund ($19,949,652) plus nonmajor proprietary Curbside Collection ($198,950). Its FY2025 decline of $4,700,084 was driven by a $5,274,169 increase in recognized landfill closure/post-closure costs — the liability nearly doubled, from $5,664,459 to $10,938,628, after updated capacity and engineering estimates. That is a cost-recognition change, not an operating cash loss: Solid Waste operating cash flow was positive $1,538,931.

Source: Camden County, Georgia Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2025 — Statement of Net Position (pp. 20–21) and Statement of Activities (pp. 22–23). Read the FY2025 ACFR (DocumentCenter)

FY2025 · Audited · June 30, 2025

Debt & long-term obligations

Camden County has no bonded debt at all — the budget book notes the last general obligation bonds were issued in 1984 ($1.1M, retired 1994), and the unused legal debt margin is $226,785,304. But “no bonds” is not “no obligations”: the county carries a GEFA note, a large landfill closure liability, leases, and compensated absences, itemized below exactly as the audit classifies them.

Source: Camden County, Georgia Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2025 — Statement of Net Position (pp. 20–21), Note 9 (pp. 56–58), Note 10, Note 11 (p. 60); debt-margin history from the FY2026 Adopted Budget (p. 93). Read the FY2025 ACFR (DocumentCenter)

FY2025 · Audited · As printed in the ACFR

Budget vs. actual — FY2025

The audit report includes GAAP-basis budgetary comparisons for FY2025 itself. These are audited FY2025 figures — a different year from the FY2026 adopted budget above. Note the FY2025 original General Fund budget shown here ($45,779,420 of revenues) is not the FY2026 adopted General Fund budget of $47,807,556.

General Fund — FY2025 FY2025 Audited

The MD&A attributes the revenue shortfall mainly to adoption of the rollback millage rate (−$672,444 on taxes) and delayed grant revenue (−$447,769 intergovernmental). ARPA Fund: the audit prints an original/final budget of $200,000 against actual revenues of $4,481,470 (intergovernmental $4,323,637 recognized against a $0 budget line, plus investment earnings $157,833) and actual expenditures of $3,914,434; after a $567,036 transfer out, the fund’s net change and ending balance were $0. The ARPA budget columns are near-meaningless as printed — the fund operated on recognized grant revenue, not its $200,000 budget — so only its actuals are noted here.

Source: Camden County, Georgia Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2025 — budgetary comparison schedules, pp. 28–30. Read the FY2025 ACFR (DocumentCenter)

Read this first

Notes, disclosures & inconsistencies

Every figure on this page was extracted from the two source documents and arithmetically cross-checked — 101 checks, 99 passed; the 2 failures are presentation defects in the budget book, disclosed below, and in each case the governing total was confirmed by other tables in the same document. The source documents also contain the following defects and conflicts, disclosed rather than silently resolved:

• Two fiscal years, two kinds of number. Camden County’s fiscal year ends June 30. FY2026 figures are an adopted (planned) budget; FY2025 figures are audited actuals. They are tagged on every figure and never blended in one chart.
• The budget book omits the Insurance row in one table. One summary table in the adopted budget book (p. 98) omits the $7,920,401 Insurance line from its General Fund category list while including it in the total — as printed, its nine rows sum to $39,887,155 against a printed total of $47,807,556. The Insurance category appears in the book’s companion tables, which foot exactly, and the printed total is correct; the complete category table is shown on this page.
• Law Library misprint in the budget resolution. The budget resolution’s Exhibit B prints Law Library revenues as $27,025; the budget’s fund tables and system report give $21,025, which is the figure consistent with the adopted all-funds total of $85,810,554. This page uses $21,025.
• A $1 defect in the Unincorporated Tax District detail. Exhibit C’s revenue components ($1,861,835 + $1,530,099 + $20,000 + $660,498) sum to $4,072,432; the printed total — confirmed by the expenditure detail and every fund table — is $4,072,431. The total governs.
• Two General Fund tax splits, one total. The resolution’s Exhibit A groups FY2026 General Fund taxes as Current Year Property Taxes $29,077,650 + All Other Taxes $10,499,054; the detail tables give Property–Current $29,497,650 + Property–Prior $600,000 + Sales $6,498,119 + Excise $2,980,935. Both presentations total $39,576,704 exactly; the grouping difference is unexplained in the book. This page uses the detail-table split and does not mix the two.
• Conflicting growth claims — neither published as fact. The budget book states the FY2026 General Fund budget is “0.54% more” than the FY2025 General Fund budget; the ACFR’s MD&A states the FY2026 budget was “8.3% higher” than the prior year, a figure that does not reconcile to any FY2025 budget or actual base in either document. Because the two sources conflict, this page states no General Fund growth rate as fact.
• The ACFR prints two different FY2025 populations. The county’s FY2025 financial report prints population as 57,013 in its demographic table (p. 115, sourced to the U.S. Bureau of the Census — and repeated identically for FY2023 and FY2024) and 60,207 in its debt-ratio table (p. 110). Neither is used as a headline figure here.
• The audit’s MD&A misstates the change in long-term liabilities. The MD&A highlights paragraph gives increase figures that conflict with a second MD&A passage; the audited Note 9 activity table proves the second version exactly (total increase $7,270,428; governmental decrease of $443,053; business-type increase of $7,713,481). The figures here follow the audited Note 9 activity table.
• Restatement of beginning balances (−$769,470). Beginning FY2025 net position was restated by −$769,470 (governmental +$1,202,135; business-type −$1,971,605) for two reasons: the Two Rivers Gun Range was moved out of the proprietary funds into the General Fund, and GASB 101 was adopted for compensated absences. FY2025’s own change in net position is $5,939,528; the MD&A’s “increased by $5,170,058” headline is ending-minus-previously-presented-beginning. The Gun Range still appears as its own fund ($293,610) in the FY2026 budget book — a budget-vs-reporting presentation difference, not an error.
• FY2024 capital-asset base differs between audit tables ($230,717). Two MD&A tables give different FY2024 capital-asset totals, differing by exactly the FY2024 SBITA asset balance. FY2025 capital figures agree everywhere ($104,519,325) and only those are published here; no FY2024→FY2025 capital-asset growth amount is stated.
• Proprietary-fund presentation difference (not an error). The proprietary statements report business-type totals gross of interfund balances, while the government-wide Statement of Net Position nets them — a $6,097 difference in both total assets and total liabilities. This page uses the Statement of Net Position totals for government-wide displays.
• Minor typographical defects in the sources (no figure impact): the budget book’s p. 98 introduction refers to “the adopted general fund budget for FY2025” in the FY2026 section; the resolution contains typographical errors in the publisher PDF; and Exhibit B’s expenditures column is glyph-corrupted in the PDF — its amounts were verified from the book’s fund tables and system report instead.

Sources: FY 2026 Adopted Budget — Camden County Board of Commissioners (DocumentCenter) and Camden County, Georgia Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2025 (DocumentCenter).