MARIETTA - Cobb County's fiscal year 2010 budget will be presented at Tuesday's Board of Commissioners meeting. The public hearing, which is required before adoption, is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 25, with adoption scheduled for Sept. 8.

The budget, which the chairman and commissioners did not receive until today, is expected to be considerably less than the budgets of previous years because of the recession.

Also Tuesday, commissioners will consider adopting a proposal to purchase 15 Goshen paratransit buses from the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority at a cost of $81,174 per bus, for a total cost of $1,217,610. If approved, the county would use $1.09 million in federal and state funding, and $121,761 from the transit division's FY09 approved capital budget, to purchase the buses.

MARTA purchased 30 Goshen buses in 2008, half of which were to replace buses that could no longer be used. The other 15 were to be used in the expansion of MARTA's small-bus program, a program that is now being pushed aside as a result of MARTA's current budgetary constraints.

Cobb Community Transit plans to use eight of the 15 buses to replace CCT buses that can no longer be used to transport residents. The other seven new buses would be used to provide paratransit transportation to the new Route 35 paratransit area.

Route 35, which will start in January, will originate at WellStar Cobb Hospital and travel along Austell Road, Veterans Memorial Highway, Discovery Boulevard and Interstate 20. It will end at the H.E. Holmes MARTA station in Atlanta.

The board unanimously approved the new route at its June 9 meeting.

"This is a much-needed route in my district," southwest Commissioner Woody Thompson said.

A hearing will also be conducted regarding consideration of a business license for Video Heat, an adult video store. The store would operate at 3005 Ring Road in Kennesaw, one of the outparcel roads surrounding Town Center Mall. The board is constitutionally required to allow adult entertainment stores to operate in appropriate areas, and as the area is almost entirely industrial with no residential homes in the area, the request is expected to be approved.

The board will also formally vote to name a building inside the newly finished Cobb Safety Village after County Manager David Hankerson, and to name the Cobb County Police Department Headquarters building after Robert E. Hightower, the first director of public safety. The board has previously announced both honors, but a formal vote to ratify the honors has not yet been made.