Your Taxpayers’ Association applauds many of the efforts currently underway by County Administration to lessen the impact of the coming budget crunch. According to reports, State mandated reductions on the County’s ability to collect traditional property taxes may impose a significant shortfall on funds available for 2008 and subsequent fiscal years. In addition, the taxable value on property going forward appears, at least in the short term, to be on the decline. This could result in a total of $40 – 50 million less available for the Administration budget that begins 1 October.

On the spending side of the equation the County’s preemptive actions reportedly include hiring freezes and mandatory planning for a 5% budget cut by every department. On the revenue side there are additional user fees being proposed, new impact fees being evaluated and the renegotiation of some favorable leases discussed. While these revenue generating measures set the right tone for the actions that will be needed, only the hiring freeze and other spending reductions will even begin to cover the shortfalls that may be coming. The very modest population increase recently announced of just over 100 last year should portend a drastic limit on collecting impact fees for new construction and the influence of user fees and leases are measured in the hundreds of thousands, not millions of dollars. When approximately 85% of your spending is for personnel costs, only strong actions in that area will yield the cuts necessary to achieve a sustainable budget.

We strongly suggest that the County Commission look in the following areas as places to take immediate action:

• Limit overtime, especially in the Fire/EMS Department. This department is less than one year into a three-year contract that mandates a 10% per year compounded salary increase. Little can be done to correct the underlying cause, excessive compensation and overly generous work rules and benefits until the next round of union negotiations. However, adjusting work schedules, response practices and other local customs should be thoroughly examined for ways to reduce the inordinate amount of overtime in this and other departments.
• Prepare for the coming negotiation with County Administration personnel that will now be represented by the Teamsters Union. Only properly trained, experienced professionals will be able to avoid the problems resulting from previous negotiations, which have driven personnel costs in some departments to unsustainable levels.
• Severely cut the use of consultants and other part time employees by relying on your staff. It appears that there are many very capable staff members whose expertise is being underutilized due to the propensity to outsource work. While unbiased expertise is sometimes necessary (such as negotiating union and other executive/management contracts) in many cases competent staff members could easily handle the requirement if given the opportunity and support.
• Combine the current hiring freeze with a flexible policy of inter department transfers. Due to random circumstances some departments may truly be understaffed, or their functions significant to meeting required levels of service in critical government functions. Transfers of work to other offices or personnel already on board, even within totally different budget areas such as the Constitutional Offices and Schools, should be considered.
• Underutilized services should be scaled back or revamped. An example might be the Community Coach program. While it does fulfill some critical requirements, there are many very large, expensive vehicles currently seen plying the roads empty or with one or two persons on board. We understand the need and mandated requirement, but there must be better, less expensive and less labor-intensive ways of filling it.