 Tired of long-term commitment plans? Then Appalachian Wireless has the new plans for you. No credit checks, no contracts, and most of the features are post-paid. It's forward-paid. The simpler way to do wireless on the region's premier cellular provider. And it starts as low as $19.99 a month with unlimited talk and text. We are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. A fiscal court meeting was held on Thursday, April 27th to discuss the receipt of the 2023 to 2024 proposed budget for Pike County. Well, this is the biggest budget in terms of projected expenditures in many years. And the proposed budget's in excess of $74 million. And in reality, though, the money that we actually have discretion to control is somewhere probably in the $25 million range. Much of the money allotted in the budget will go towards projects like the Wolf Pit industrial site as well as FEMA relief for the July 2022 flooding. The budget also takes into account the uptick and coal and mineral severance in addition to park and senior citizen center maintenance. It is a budget that takes into account the aging condition of our parks and senior citizen centers, our community centers. A lot of those buildings were built at the same time. And the county's gonna have a problem when you start having heat pumps in community centers and senior citizen centers starting to go out at the same time. We're trying to get ahead of that. We're working to replace roofs that need to be replaced. We have four parks that we plan on doing major repairs to a lot of our infrastructure is old. A lot of it was built in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s and we're starting to see significant expenditures and we're trying to get ahead of that. And this budget takes into account some of those needs. The budget included a 2% pay increase for employees due to the cost of living rising. The workers' compensation premium was reduced, but there was a 7% increase in health insurance for employees. A first reading of the proposed budget will be held during a special meeting in May. For Mountaintop News, I'm Kelsey Dean.