The Pinal County Board of Supervisors approved additional measures aimed at balancing the county’s budget while still meeting the needs of the public. The Board approved several strategies aimed at balancing the budget due to declines in fees and sales tax.
“Despite entering the year with an austere budget, a continued decline in the economy is forcing a request for Board approval of a two percent mid-year budget cut,” said County Manager Terry Doolittle.
He explained to the Board that state shared sales tax, which accounts for the bulk of the General Fund, is down about 12%. Revenue from permits and fees is also down.
“We are not taking as bad a hit as some counties but we are looking at a general fund shortfall of about 5.8 percent,” Doolittle added.
To address the shortfall, the Supervisors approved a hiring freeze that will take effect next Monday that will extend through June 30th, 2010. With the exception of critically needed positions in public safety, detention, probation and correctional health, the hiring freeze would apply to positions funded through the General Fund.
One year ago, Pinal County officials instituted a 180-day hiring delay that resulted in some significant vacancy savings to help balance the budget. Elected Officials, Court Officials and department directors can request an exemption from the hiring freeze for essential personnelonly.
The Board also implemented a freeze on travel and training unless it is “mission critical” or training that is required to maintain professional certifications.
Another strategy approved by the Board is to offer an incentive for early retirement to employees with 10 or more years of service who are 62 or older. Approximately 20 employees could choose to take advantage of the incentive, which includes the pay out of accrued sick leave.
“Several vacant positions are also being eliminated. Based on current economic forecasts, departments may need to implement layoffs to meet FY 2009-2010 budget objectives,” Doolittle said. “I have asked our leadership teams to develop the next year’s budget with two scenarios – projecting budget cuts of five and ten percent.”
“The goal in this economy has to be focused on meeting the needs of the public for safety, health and responsible community development while managing the taxpayer dollar wisely,” Chairman David Snider stated. “All areas of funding are getting hit. As we look to make difficult decisions in the future, we will take into account what is mandated, non-mandated, mission critical and non-mission critical and seek to balance competing priorities.”
“We need to be careful that we not use a hatchet when a scalpel would be better,” Supervisor Bryan Martyn said. “We are having to take a hard look at cutting programs that are nice to do for the communities but are not vitally necessary or mission critical.”
The program that the Supervisors have suspended is the Community Cleanup program. In lieu of the program, the County will work with landfill operators to implement a program so that residents can take their trash to the dump for free once per quarter.
“The hope is that communities and volunteers will organize their own cleanups and take advantage of the free dump day option. We cannot afford to be the garbage service for the entire County,” Supervisor Martyn said.
Supervisor Pete Rios, who previously served in the State Legislature, said he has been involved in many budget preparations and reductions in bad economic times.
“I am pleased that Pinal County allowed agency heads and the Sheriff to decide how they would reduce their budgets by two percent to balance this year’s budget. By not cutting out certain budget line items, the Board of Supervisors did not micro-manage anyone’s budget priorities,” Rios said.