Public safety costs account for about 46 percent of Hall County’s general fund budget. But with that revenue source strained in recent years, the county’s fire department has tried to help alleviate this pressure. “We have streamlined areas, continued to operate in an extremely lean fashion and continued to shift the budgetary burden from the general fund to the fire district,” Fire Chief David Kimbrell wrote in a letter to county finance officials outlining his fiscal year 2015 budget requests.