The Ostrich Approach

There are problems with this year’s budget. Now, I know that many who are reading this are thinking really-no joke but I mean that there are serious issues with this year’s budget and it concerns me.

First, and foremost, I have yet to see a budget that is not riddled with mistakes. The fiscal year 2013-2014 ends on June 30, 2014 and the theory is that a new budget is waiting in the wings, ready to be rolled out for vote. I would consider this budget to be more in the early to mid “working” phase, rather than an end product. Just this week, Committee Members identified two corrections that totaled more than $130,000. That constitutes more than one penny worth of property tax and those were not the only “clean ups” that will need to be made before sending this budget for a final vote. In addition, $666,303 in possible new revenue, via an assignment in the general fund balance that no one seems to have information on, was identified. That is a lot of money. In fact, it is almost six pennies on the tax rate.

Even some members of the budget committee are getting concerned at the dicey information stream. The question arose from one Committee Member Do you not own a lap top computer in regard to questions about the budget. By the way, the answer from the Finance Office was no.

I understand that there have been a lot of changes in the Finance Office in the last few years and change brings with it a learning curve. I am concerned that more of the budget committee members don’t appear more concerned. If I was faced with raising taxes and discovered that there was one penny or several pennies that could have been used to balance the budget but, instead, departments were asked to make more cuts, I would not have been pleased. The budget committee has nothing built in for needs of various departments. Once again, it is a bare bones budget that leaves the County departments struggling for extra pens and paperclips. Carrying the same budget year after year is the equivalent of a cut, because the price of doing business goes up every year.

It is time to face the facts. We need to see a real, comprehensive budget document that is mistake free and we are going to have a tax increase. Just how much depends on who gets on the bandwagon to release the $666,303 and how it is used. But, there will still be a tax increase. The budget committee already built one in when they voted to assume a $2.28 tax rate starting point. Certainly, the State did say that it would take $2.28 this year to just reach the amount of property tax brought in 2013-2014 because of lower assessments. But, and this is a big but, the State does not take into account growth, which was around $800,000 last year. Actually, Jefferson County could have raised the base tax to $2.21 and brought in the same amount of revenue, considering growth. But we didn’t. Now, we were going to have a tax increase anyway, but it just goes down a little better for the County Commission if they let the public believe that 13 cents of the increase is State mandated. Personally, I would have rather seen the County Commission step up and admit that you can’t build new schools without a tax increase. Heck, we can’t buy extra post it notes or rubber bands without a tax increase. That does not mean that anyone is against education or new schools. It just means that you have to pay for what you purchase. I think of it like this. Those big box furniture stores that will sell you a couch today but there are no payments for two years-you know the ones. By the time you begin paying on your “new” couch it is old and stained. I would feel a lot better paying for schools when they are new and shiny instead of waiting until the newness wears off. We seriously need a reasonable fiscal plan that does not include hitting the lottery or passing the buck.

As I said, there are serious problems with this budget and, while some Commissioners may be searching for an economic escape hatch, others seem to have adopted the ostrich philosophy of economic management. Perhaps what scares me the most is the every vote counts the same.