There was an informational meeting on February 16 to discuss the county budget problems. The County Fund balance should be $12 to $24 million. As of January 1, 2006 we had about $5.6 million with a large amount due to be paid out to the School districts and towns. During the 2nd Quarter of the Year, the county is going out to borrow $48,000,000 in bonds on the jail. There is a good possibility that between the low fund balance and the continuing cash problems, that the bond rating will be lowered and it will cost more to finance the jail than anticipated. The jail is costing $325,000 per month until it opens, in addition to the roughly $90,000 per month we are paying to board out prisoners. Right now we are heating and maintaining two jail buildings. Unless we come up with new sources of revenues and/or significant cuts in expenses, our downward spiral on budget surpluses will continue. In 2004 we had about $24,000,000 in surplus which was used to reduce taxes with no corresponding cuts in spending. Another problem with the budget is that sales tax revenues were overestimated which will also cause problems toward the end of the year. We are working to make structural changes to the county government to improve efficiency and be effective in dealing with contracts and employment. There is a hiring freeze in place - only critical jobs are being filled. We have been stopping department heads from filling vacant jobs in their departments. At this meeting, there was talk about reducing the county workforce by about 10%. Hopefully this can be done through attrition. There will be a special meeting of the Ways and Means Committee at 5 pm on Tuesday, Feb. 21 to discuss some of the plans that are in the works to bring the budget back into a sound financial position.
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