County faces huge budget shortfall

On Tuesday afternoon, two days before this week’s back-to-back budget workshops, Franklin County commissioners got their first hard look at the finance department’s number crunching for the next fiscal year.

If the millage rate remains unchanged from this year, then about $2.8 million in cuts will have to be made.

If expenditures remain the same as this year, then the millage rate will have to rise by about 33 percent.

Stark choices to be made at a time when the nation is slowly dragging itself out from under a recession, and federal stimulus dollars are about to dry up.

But, just as the five-member board was squinting hard at the detailed budget information provided them by Clerk of Courts Marcia Johnson’s office, one fact stood out.

The combined budget proposals from constitutional officers, county departments and non-governmental organizations had actually come in higher than last year, to the tune of an additional $417,267.

Only seven departments had cut their 2010-11 budget requests from this year’s amounts, and of these, four of them were each sliced by less than two-tenths of 1 percent, and the other three were each trimmed by less than 3.5 percent.

The rest of the budget requests were all higher than this year, with mosquito control wanting 14 percent more, the road department 12 percent more, the county library and parks and recreation each 8 percent more, solid waste about 5.5 percent more, animal control about 4 percent more, and so on.

“The first order is to send a message that we don’t think there should be any increases in there this year,” said Chairman Smokey Parrish. “We have a tough budget year; we should be finding ways to help the taxpayer.”

Commissioner Bevin Putnal quickly agreed. “We told everybody not to increase their budget and yet we have people still doing it,” he said. “The money’s not there.”

No votes were taken since it was an information session, affording Johnson and finance department staffers Linda Phillips and Erin Griffith a chance to brief the commission on the numbers ahead of the two all-day workshops this Thursday and Friday, July 22 and 23.

It was clear that unless a massive cut in state or federal aid had prompted a specific request for increased funding, the commissioners would not be looking kindly on any proposed growth in department budgets or organizational requests.

‘A real crisis in the county’

In the data she provided, Johnson noted the anticipated decline next year of $720 million in certified taxable value for the entire county, from $2.78 billion down to $2.06 billion.

As a result, the 3.657-mills that were levied this year would only generate about $7.56 million for the 2010-11 budget, or about $2.8 million less than the more than $10 million that flowed in this year.

The only way to generate the same amount as this year, $10.09 million, would be to increase the millage rate to 4.9028, or by about 33 percent.

“That’s a lot of increase. That’s too much at one time,” said Commissioner Cheryl Sanders, who suggested more than once that she would prefer to see no hike in this year’s millage rate.

“We’re stuck up here,” she said. “Unless we’re all willing to make substantial cuts, we’re not going to get nowhere.”

Commissioner Pinki Jackel offered just the type of cuts Sanders was referring to, stressing that the county was facing a crisis that required willingness to compromise.

“This is a real crisis in the county. The schools are in a crisis, and we're in a crisis,” she said. “What we’ve gotten back is the same budgets as last year, or very slightly changed, or additional budget requests. We’ve got to get into the realm of reality now in Franklin County.

“Things are radically different. We’re not acting on the reality of what's here,” she said.

Jackel directed her attention to staffing levels, one area of the budget that is most sensitive, and where the majority of the tax dollars go. She said the number of budgeted permanent positions in the county are little changed from the boom years of six and seven years ago, and are running nine positions ahead of 2003-04 but down from a high of 191 county workers in 2006.

“We’re still at a (similar) level now some five years later after we have consistently seen property values go down and down and down,” she said. “We still have the maximum number of full-time positions in the county. It’s a tough thing to say, looking at these, but there’s an obvious conclusion to draw: We have too many fulltime employees for the cycle of decline the county has been in the last five years. I think this has to be looked at.”

Jackel praised the work of Johnson’s office in putting together a detailed budget packet, and urged her colleagues to examine some suggestions the Clerk had put forward for possible revenue generation. These included a possible sale or transfer of the Armory to Apalachicola, a hike in tipping fees and/or addition of trash collection fees, better use of underutilized county-owned space, increase in rental fees for the old county health department now leased to Dr. Stephen Miniat, paring back contributions to retiree health insurance and further options.

“I appreciate all the hard work that clerk has done; they’ve put a lot of time and effort into this,” said Jackel. “I think we do have a long way to go to be in agreement. I’m willing to make some compromises along the way. Others needs to take a hard look at making some compromises.”

Jackel called for an across-the-board 15 percent budget cut to every department, a proposal that drew little if any support from the other commissioners and vocal opposition from Johnson.

“I don’t see that,” said Commissioner Noah Lockley, who instead called for more cuts to the non-governmental organizations who receive more than $750,000 in funding from the county, and who have asked for an increase of $87,523, $50,000 of which is for the ambulance service.

“We’re going to ask the working people to cut, and turn around and give money to these organizations? Part of them shouldn’t be in there no way,” he said, specifically citing the county literacy program, which he said should be a school board, and not a county, responsibility.

“That’s a school mission,” he said. “When we had the money we done it but when it’s tight, give it back to the school. I want to see that gone, cut it out, period.”

‘It’s taking your job off of you’

Johnson said an across-the-board cut was a “terrible” idea that gives commissioners a chance to evade their role of making tough decisions.

“It’s taking your job off of you,” she said. “At some point you have to look at the ones who have cut and who haven’t cut. (An across-the-board) cut is a whole lot more detrimental to me than it would be the sheriff.”

Sherriff Skip Shiver has asked for a $4.89 million budget, a drop of 0.18 percent from this year. If passed, funding for the department would consume as much as or more than half the entire budget of ad valorem tax dollars.

“When you have a sheriff’s budget at $5 million, how in the world are you going to operate the county?” asked Putnal.

Putnal agreed that a 15 percent cut would be devastating to the smaller departments, such as roads and the elections office. “Who’s going to be the first one to go? The lowest paid person and you’re not going to save any money that way,” he said. “The little people who do most of the work, you don’t want to get rid of those people because they’re earning their pay.”

Johnson stressed that a lot of services had been added in the county over the past five to six years, and that has increased maintenance costs to county departments. She noted that many other counties have an extensive list of fees, such as charges for building use, boat ramps, trash pickup, or admission for parks and recreation areas.

“At some point,, you have to decide do you want to increase fees to offset costs?” asked Johnson.

Putnal took immediate issue with the thought of raising fees. “It would be a nightmare to collect,” he said. “I’m not going to stand out there and take people’s money to use a boat ramp. We would spend a lot more money hiring people to collect the money than what it would be worth.”

Lockley said it would be unwise to drive millage rates down, as there is a possibility they may be frozen by the state, and this could only give rise to a large jump in tax rates in a future year.

“We keep on getting this low millage, it’s going to be stuck,” he said. “It’s going to come back to haunt us. If we don’t increase the millage and the way things are going in a couple years, you’re going to have to put a big increase in there.”

Lockley said the commissioners may want to consider a plan to equalize and cap spending to each of the five districts, an idea that drew a sharp rebuke from Jackel.

She suggested that another alternative might be to pour into each district an amount equivalent to what the district pays out in taxes, and then quickly noted that both ideas would be heading in the wrong direction.

“I don’t think the way to approach the budget is to sit up here and criticize each other and encourage divisions,” she said. “We’re not at war against each other here. We’re at war against the problem.

“We’ve got to compromise,” she said. “Some people say they have areas in their budgets, that they need every penny in this budget. I’m sorry, I don’t accept that premise. If there has ever been a time not to raise people’s costs of owning property in Franklin County this is one of them.”

‘You need to equalize the pain’

While the bulk of public discussion will be heard this week, the commissioners did hear from three citizens, who made brief remarks, all calling for tighter spending.

“You need to equalize the pain as best as possible, said Allen Feifer, representing the Concerned Citizens of Franklin County, a tax-cutting group.

He suggested the county look at making $150,000 in cuts to health insurance subsidies and $125,000 in cuts to non-governmental organizations, eliminating all ambulance subsidies, and 10 percent across-the-board cut to all constitutional officers and county departments,.

“The sheriff’s budget has grown since 2004, when it was $4.39 million back then and today is at $5 million. He can stand a haircut,” said Feifer. “If you don’t mandate specific dollar cuts, you’re going to wind up with everybody standing their ground.

“Please don’t scare the public, we can do better,” he said. “We have the highest taxes per person in the state, if not we’re number two. We have to learn to live off the money that we earn.”

Alligator Point’s Ken Osborn said the county should consider that private sector, non-government unemployment in the county is close to 20 to 24 percent, and that these employees, unlike government workers, pay for their own health care premiums and fund their own retirement accounts.

He said the county might want to consider giving the medical office building to Miniat. “We’d be better off to give the building to him and collect some taxes from it and this county would come out ahead,” he said.

Osborn urged the commission not to raise millage. “It’s going to be hurt the people who can least afford it,” he said.

Richard Harper spoke out against any tax increases, noting that the county budget has grown by millions of dollars from 2000 to 2006, leading to the “greatest tax increase ever to Franklin County citizens.”

He specifically cited the property appraiser’s office, whose employment he said had nearly doubled in the last decade, and the building department, which he said is now doing a fraction of the new building permits with the same number of staffers as during the boom.

“The hard part is the reality that these unneeded positions are human beings,” he said. “A millage rate increase hits every single property owner in Franklin County. Do you want to raise taxes to maintain positions that aren’t needed anymore? This is going to be hard and the easiest way to do it is to bite the bullet and say we don’t need the level of personnel.”

Parrish closed the meeting by noting, as had Johnson and Sanders, that there are a large number of state mandates, passed down to counties by the Florida Legislature, that must be paid for if the county is to fulfill its legal obligations.

He urged his colleagues to take responsibility for their votes by voicing their stance on cuts throughout the process, rather than just voting no on a proposed budget and deploring any tax increase.

“Most people have their own little pet project that they want to see funded, and they all provide a service to the community,” he said. “I mean for us to mention specific cuts that they’re willing to make.

“We can all sit up here and say we want to cut taxes,” Parrish said. “Our job is to figure out how to do that.”