 Ring in the New Year with amazing savings from Appalachian Wireless. Get the Galaxy S7 for just $49.99 when you sign a renew a two-year service agreement. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. It's a simple thing. We've got certain fixed costs. You've got to have a certain amount of revenues to take care of that. You can't cut yourself into prosperity. That was Judge Executive Ben Hale speaking to a full house today, a special called meeting of the Floyd County Fiscal Court. Now Massachusetts today are looking for answers to a looming budgetary crisis, specifically a $1.1 million budget deficit. I think we cannot, we have to face the facts on this. This is what other counties and co-producing counties has already been facing. We've been lucky enough because of some of the cost savings that I did the first year and have to carry over. We've been able to prolong it. But this past year, those revenue streams from our coal and our mineral has gone down so drastically. In 2013, the county faced a budget shortfall dilemma that ultimately forced them to make several layoffs. However, that was when the county was receiving nearly $5 million in coal and mineral severance. This year's projected coal and mineral payments, a mere $453,000 and change. The new reality of not having that coal severance and that mineral tax that we have been so dependent on just like every other county was in Eastern Kentucky for 30 years, it's pretty much a thing of the past. Now during today's meeting, County Attorney Keith Bartley directed a sharply pointed finger at Frankfurt in regard to coal severance money, a portion of which has left coal-producing counties and gone to other areas in the state. Now Bartley says it's time for the state to give a little back. For decades, coal severance monies were taken out of coal-producing counties and spent to do things like build bridges across the Ohio River or build a ruck ring, hundreds of millions of dollars went into projects in non-co-producing counties. The problem with it is that's okay if the revenue goes that way, but there's none of it ever comes back this way. Why is there not monies that come from taxes on, say, the auto industry or monies that are on the taxes for the forced industry or the tobacco industry or whatever the case might be? Why does none of that ever come back to coal-producing counties? Magistrates put forth several ideas today to increase revenues through various taxes as well as more budget cuts, but those changes barely put a dent in the 2017 shortfall and the clock is ticking. Reporting from Prestonsburg for EKB News, I'm Jackson Ladder.