 With forward pay from Appalachian Wireless, you'll avoid contracts and credit checks while taking advantage of some awesome perks like unlimited talk text and 3 gigs of data for just $44.99 or with 5 gigs for a mere $59.99. Forward pay, that's today's Appalachian Wireless. One controversial topic over the last year has been Pied County's occupational tax. However, officials say without that extra support, the Pied County Fiscal Court would be struggling to keep its head above water. If we didn't have the occupational, that's, you know, we budged at $3 million for this year. There have been a lot more cuts and a lot more of a skeleton crew working for the county. In fact, for the first quarter of the 2016-17 fiscal year budget, it has put the fiscal court ahead of schedule. Last year we calculated the average would be around $750,000 and we still wanted to be conservative. But for the first quarter, we have received $800,000, so we're $50,000 above what we'd expected. And if that trend continues or grows, then we've done a good job of budgeting. It's one of those things you never know how the economy is to know what to really budget for, so I do like to be conservative. Overall, Pied County Treasurer, John DeBillider, believes this year's fiscal budget is in good shape so far. The total revenue received is 24.17 percent for the overall budget. The expenses that we've expended for the overall budget is 21.93 percent, which that does include the 2.5 we borrowed from the bank. So with that, we are being able to keep ahead of everything. At this time, Pied County fiscal court is waiting on coal severance numbers from the Department of Local Government and should receive a report in a week. Putting in Pikeville for EKB News, I'm Shelby Steele.