A federal mandate is forcing the county to slash more than $5.1 million out of the budget, in order to balance it, according to Butler County Finance Director Tawana Keels.
“From a budgeting standpoint, what I’m being told is about 7.5 percent of our sales tax revenue we had projected will not be received in the county,” Keels said. “Budget-wise what that means to our county departments and our county budget is instead of having a $95.3 million balanced budget, I’m now looking at a $92.2 million balanced budget.”
Sheriff Richard Jones, who historically has the largest budget, is first on the hearing list. The sheriff is asking for $1.8 million more, for a total of $34.4 million, largely because of new union contracts.
“Personnel increases include personnel wage, and benefit increases for the six bargaining units which includes base wage increases, step increases, initiative incentives, holiday pay, longevity and retirement payouts,” sheriff’s Finance Director Vickie Barger wrote in her report to the commissioners. “The increases range from 1.5 to 2.5 percent.”
Butler County courts and the prosecutor’s office will also have budgets hearings Monday. Last year a common theme with those offices and the sheriff was dealing with the heroin epidemic. Future actions by the federal and state governments on the heroin issue, need to figure in the mix, Butler County Administrator Charlie Young said.
“There are plans, I think we hear the federal government talking about putting funding streams in place, we’re hearing from the state that they are considering funding streams,” he said. “One of our big problems, that I hope will be addressed with our state legislature relates to the treatment within our jails.”
Another focus for the county continues to be debt reduction. The county is paying off $9.5 million this year and will retire $38 million, erasing all debt, by the end of 2020. The general fund debt stood at almost $100 million in 2009. Keels said the sales tax setback will not impact their debt repayment program.
“None of the debt reduction has changed,” she said. “We are still focused on being debt free in 2020. We’re still going to focus on our infrastructure and investing in capital. We had $12 million in capital requests to consider.”
Commissioner Don Dixon said the temptation, with things beginning to look better financially, is to increase spending that had been severely cut during the Great Recession, but they cannot go overboard.
“I know as things get better people want to do more, they want to deliver more services,” he said. “But I think we have to be constantly vigilant on what we are required to do and what we would like to do. With the help of the office holders we will get to the numbers we need, because we’re all on the same page.”
The commissioners have 17 hearings scheduled Monday and 16 on Oct. 17.
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