Gloucester County Administrator Brent Fedors presented his proposed fiscal year 2019 budget of $115.2 million for Gloucester County to the board of supervisors Monday night in the colonial courthouse. The proposed budget is up about $1.95 million, or 1.7 percent from the current year, and incorporates a penny-and-a-half increase on the real estate tax rate.

Fedors called his proposed budget an “aggressive” one, designed to tackle a very large challenge, which is the $3.04 million compensation deficit that county and school employees have seen building over the years. “We’ve gone from a passenger jet to a fighter jet this year,” Fedors said to help explain how lean his proposed budget is.

Though the school system requested a $3.21 million increase in its local transfer for the next fiscal year, the proposed county budget allocates $1.86 million, with the additional transfer being targeted to help offset the school system’s compensation problem.

Fed...