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It's Budget Time
Posted 12-19-2001
It's that time of year! Yes, the holidays are here, but those of us in
county governments across Pennsylvania are busy shaping our budgets for the
upcoming year. Westmoreland County has begun the process, and we will pass a
final budget on December 27th. The budget will not include a tax increase.
Our aggressive approach to managing the budget is making this possible in a
time when the demands for money from every direction continue to grow.
This Board of Commissioners
took up the challenge of battling what appeared to be a looming deficit in
2003. We reopened our first budget and made substantial cuts that began to
put the county on better footing. But, that was only a piece of the puzzle.
We have continued to look at ways of negotiating better contracts, reducing
the size of the workforce without layoffs, and generating some new revenue
sources. No one strategy will solve the challenge, but collectively, we can
manage aggressively and continue to provide quality services.
The Commissioners have worked
on many cuts of expenditures that don't always make headlines. We introduced
competition for health insurance providers that reduced the costs for groups
covered by the new providers and caused our long time provider to offer
better rates. This action still gave quality health benefits to our
employees. We carried out the early retirement incentive program that will
ultimately reduce payroll costs by a half million dollars. Our utility
costs, like everyone else's, continue to climb. We hired a firm to help us
find savings. We are negotiating a new natural gas contract that will reduce
our future costs by 50%. They've also helped us consolidate our cellular
phone contracts and buy a better plan that will save thousands of dollars a
year.
It is a combination of the
type of savings I've mentioned and identifying additional revenue sources
that makes for effective administration of our budget. We implemented a
policy to recover about 80% of the costs of our Weights and Measures
Department by imposing a small fee for the testing of pumps and scales. The
responsibility for this testing could be passed on to the Commonwealth.
However, to protect both businesses and consumers, we've worked out a
strategy that would help partially finance the operation.
To generate more revenue, we
also encouraged the courts to raise offender supervision fees. These fees
are paid by people on probation and only partially offset the cost of the
Adult Probation Department. They were first imposed in 1991 at $25 per
month. They were never adjusted for inflation until this year. As a matter
of fairness, we need them to be adjusted for inflation annually. Certainly
the cost of operating probation goes up each year.
I've tried to share some
examples of the challenges we face in managing a $270 million budget that
has only about 20% paid from real estate taxes. The funding sources and
categories are extremely complex. It is almost impossible to make across the
board cuts. Some departments are too small for those types of cuts. In other
departments, reducing our partial matching funds would only serve to reduce
the dollars they receive from other funding sources. Our work on the budget
is actually an evaluation of a number of sub-budgets with varying
intricacies.
There may not be very much
innovation in how we work on the budget. Sometimes, there is no substitute
for committing time and energy for hard work. When I took office, spending
was increasing 7% or 8% a year, while property tax revenue was increasing
only 1.5% per year. Now, we are holding spending increases to under 4%. This
year, our year-end projection for general fund revenues is approximately
$88.6 million. Our year-end projection for general fund spending is $88.7
million. If we can keep our general fund revenues and expenses that close,
it would be an example of prudent, conservative budget management.
We can dismantle county
government completely and find greater savings, but I don't believe that is
in the best interests of our county and our children. This county is a great
place to live and work. While county government is far from perfect, it is a
positive aspect of Westmoreland County. If the elected leaders use sound
judgment and intelligently manage our budget, I'm confident county
government will be able to continue to successfully serve the people. |
