Sunday, May 31, 2009
To borrow, or not to borrow: that is the question.
At the budget hearing of last week, the finance officer for the CCSO told the county commissioners that as nearly as she could figure it, based upon the commission's proposed FY-10 budget for her department, the CCSO will have expended all of the budgeted funds by possibly as early as mid-January and no later than early February. The fact is that when that happens, barring a near miraculous increase in sales tax revenues between now and then, the county will have to borrow money to keep the CCSO going for the remaining 5 months or so of FY-10. Given a choice between just waiting to see just how much we will have to borrow when the time comes and pay it back with interest or seeing the CCBOC vote now to raise the FY-10 millage rate just enough to cover the CCSO's projected costs (+/- another $2 million), which would you rather see the CCBOC do? Please give me your answer via the poll I'm about to put up.
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13 comments:
I think you should have had a third choice:
Reduce county employees to make up the difference.
I'm fairly certain I know the answer to this question, but please tell us where you think employees should be let go. What departments do you have in mind and why?
As you quoted one previous poster on the topix board, the county should not be viewed as a jobs program.
1.Shut down PSA (or cut back to skeleton staff)
2.Eliminate unnecessary driving by all county vehicles (ie: driving a fire truck to a medical EMS call)
3.Tell ALL departments to reduce budget by 10% (if that means laying people off, then do it)
4. Review contracts with outside venders. Renegotiate when possible or terminate those not absolutely essential.
5. Eliminate services duplicated by cities or State. (we don't need two fire stations on Gross Road within 1/2 mile of each other)
There are a few ideas. It's up to management to see if any are practical or worthwhile.
They should just bite the bullet and raise the millage rate now and fund the Sheriff's Dept. as they should have done to begin with. They know that they are required by Georgia Law to fund that Dept, unless they can prove that he, the Sheriff, is asking for items in his budget that are not needed. Its either fund it now, borrow money later and pay interest or face a law suit, which will be very costly as well.
regarding cuts: I'm pleased to se you're not a nut case from TOPIX with a bunch of crap about "Howard's harem."
As to your # 1: I would not favor shutting the PSA down, but I would favor not only keeping Gilligan's Island closed permanently, but also putting it up for sale immediately.
As to #2: Unless it is to a wreck with spilled fuel or a car on fire, I tend to agree. Maybe one police car, but that should do it. The night I had to call EMS, there was the ambulance, a fire truck and three police cars out in the Park Place parking lot with light flashing. Woke up half the complex at 1:00 AM. It got down right crowded in my living room. The two paramedics on the ambulance would have beem quite adequate.
As to 3, I believe that all departmental budgets are cut to the bone now. I would rather see reductions, where feasible without going below acceptable service levels, to happen by attrition, vice firings.
As to 4, I agree. I would certainly hope that that has already been done.
As to 5, I agree.
So how do you feel about consolidation?
Surpisingly, on an admittedly miniscule sample (so far) 71% of respondents to poll favor "biting the bullet" and raising the millage rate as needed versus borrowing. So do I. We can thank the Terrible Troika for the need to do so. I hope the District 5 people will bear that in mind the next time St.David, the sole surviving member of the Terrible Troika, comes up for re-election.
From what I saw on the budget posted, they can take away the $232,891.00 increase that is in EMS, the $ 36,440.00 increase in the admin dept, and adjust the county retirement to the 6% instead of 12%, take away the $ 49,000.00 increase in Information Technology, the $28,800 for county engineer, fire services had an increase of $ 17,986.00, plus many more departments that has increases in just the salaries plus fica, retirement, All this money could be given to the sheriff dept. AND IT SHOULD. Why should these departments pad there budget for pay increases or new hires.
Unfortunately, you are just moving numbers around on paper without access to the underlying facts as to why those numbers exist in the proposed budget as they are. With regards to the county engineer, for instance, my understanding is that having an in house engineer has already led to savings far in excess of his salary by not having to alwys hire an outside, consulting engineer. I beleive some project he oversaw at the jail (new piping) alone was citing as a net savings over his salary.
As to the 12% to the retirement fund you mention, if, in fact, the taxpayers are coughing up a pension contribution equal to 12% of employee pay, I agree that that is way too generous. If memeory serves me, the state only chips in a matching 5% for teachers, for example.
Letr me say it again: the reason we are in this fix is that in recent years past, the Terrible Troika (Rainer, Rhodes, herrin) consistently voted every year to lower the millage rate to give them a huge political advantage as encumbnets over any would be challengers. They did this by raiding the county's "rainy day funds" against persistent advice not to by both Berry and Feller.
Whenn the current monsoon season hit, the funds were depleted. We need to rebuild those funds and NEVER let the county get into this position again. Probably the least painful way to do that would be to NOT do a roll back for a few years as revenues eventually return.
5. Eliminate services duplicated by cities or State. (we don't need two fire stations on Gross Road within 1/2 mile of each other)
This should be done before the millage rate is ever elevated.
We can blame this on all of the commissioners, past and present. But the 12% was only for the county retirement, the match was an additional line item budget which was not included. These are increases over the present budget 2008-2009. If there is a FREEZE on pay increases and hiring there should not be an increase in the budget salaries reguardless of what you think. A freeze is a freeze. Explain WHY EMS and the commissioners office gets increases when they cut the departments of the sheriff, it makes no sense, the sheriff departments (sheriff,911, and jail) are way more important than the general government which has too many employees working there now, which in my opinion are OVERPAID. Why is EMS entitled to an additional retirement that the same retirement the sheriff dept employees are entitled to also but can not have. It makes no sense that they are trying to make that dept look bad or fail which in the long run is only going to cause a lawsuit since the law stated that the commissioners have to allow enough money for them to operate.
If you re-read all of those figures are INCREASES over current year budget. They should have also been cut. I don't get it, and if Mr Howard is behind this then he needs to move on since he is so high maintenance and costing this county way to much money. I pay Plenty of taxes now to the county, I would like to elect that my share go straight to the sheriff dept and not to general government. If it takes a tax increase, then have it. We Need the sheriff dept more than other made up positions that Mr Howard thinks we need.
Okay, I just spent the better part of an hour going over the FY-10 budget. I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but just to make sure we are on the same page, your were, I hope, consistently comparing the proposed budget for each item for FY-09 to the porposed budget for the same item in FY-10 and not comparing the almost universally lower YTD figures for FY -09. What I saw was a budget in which the overwhelming majority of departmental budgets had been cut - not increased. Now, witht e exception of public health, it is true that all of those with increases were almost entirely in the area of salaries.
It would appaer that all of those increases come from the hiring of additional employees as opposed to raises for existing employees (the exception being some individuals who were assigned more respsonsibilities when Mr. Howard combined some departments in a streamling move not long after he came on board. Staci Bowick is a pefect example. Mr. Howard has previously explained the logic behind those additional hires those aditional hires. You may recall that I posted his explanation on this blog not long ago. Your implicatrion is that a hiring freeze was declkared and then Mr. Howard susbsequently hired new employees in contravention of the band. I'm confident that if you check, you will find that those hires were made BEFORE the freeze. The freeze was announced, as I recall, when we learned of a huge reduction in funds the county would receive from the state.
On the whole, I see the budget as evidence of a lot of hard and deep cuts that were made almost across the board.
As to that "third" pension figure for firemen: I don;t know if they have this in Georgia, but when I worked in risk management for the City of Jax in the early 80's, I learned that Florida has a law that presumes that any fireman who develops any kind of heart and/or lung related disability got that way as the result of fighting fires (even if he eats a dozen eggs every morning and smokes a carton every day). That smallest fireman pension fund may be to fund a similar law in Georgia.
Oh, and regarding the stated objective of coming up with a budget which would require no rate increase (stated in Power Point presentation at last week's budget hearing), it is not at all out of the realm of possibility that the CCBOC knows damned well that with no millage rate increase tomorrow not, they will absolutely, possitively HAVE to borrow money to fund the CCS0 for the last 5 months or so of FY-10, but are hell bent and determined to go through with this charade of having been able to avoid a millage rate increase.
By the way, I only JUST NOW went over to TOPIX and saw where you had posted your last comment with the comment that you had to post it there in case I did not post it. As you can see, that was not necessary. Now, are you man or woman enough to not only admit on TOPIX that you were wrong in your assumption, but post a link back to my blog so that readers may see my response?
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