Board Shaves 3 Cents

By Hannah Wever
Published: March 13, 2008

At budget work sessions last week, county officials looked at trimming long-term county initiatives to make short-term operation costs more realistic. By the end of the evening, supervisors successfully trimmed a few pennies off a proposed tax increase by postponing funding for several inevitable expenses in the 2008-2009 proposed county budget.

Two weeks ago, Orange County Administrator Bill Rolfe presented the 2008-2009 county budget to the board of supervisors. The budget totaled $165,568,671, a 15 percent increase over last year’s budget. To adequately fund everything in the proposed budget, the county would need to increase real estate taxes $.09.

By the end of the supervisors’ second work session last week, county officials had managed to pare about $2 million from next year’s budget, effectively shaving about $.03 off the proposed $.09 tax increase.

“I think we really owe it to the taxpayers,” District 4 Supervisor Teri Pace said. “Most of them will not be dealing with increases in their budgets.”
County officials pored over the proposed budget, evaluating each line item for potential savings. And where they found those savings, was in some of the county’s plans for the future.

The most recent reassessment was completed in 2006, and the next one is scheduled for 2010.

But next year’s proposed budget includes a payment toward the future expense for reassessing county residents’ property values.

“You may want to extend it another two years,” Rolfe told supervisors. Legally, he continued, for a locality with a population under 50,000, reassessments can be done as infrequently as every six years. But according to the county’s plans, tax dollars are set aside now for the impending re-evaluation.

“It’s funding set aside each year to fund the cost of reassessment,” Orange County Finance Director Karen Karasinski explained

“Is there a reason we front- loaded that?” District 5 Supervisor Lee Frame said.

“Most of the money will be spent in 2010,” Rolfe reminded him.

But in this year’s troubled economy, Frame said, the greater value would be to trim the amount of 2008-2009 revenue the county planned to use towards the reassessment.

“I’m just saying even-fund it,” he suggested. “This saves us $50,000 now.”

And his counterparts on the board agreed.

Another ongoing project, providing county-wide wireless broadband access, proved another budget item in which the supervisors realized savings by reevaluating the project’s timetable for completion.

“I realize what we’re trying to do,” Frame said. “How critical is that time-wise? If we stretched that out two or three years, is that an efficient way of doing that?”

Rolfe said the high-speed internet access project could go down a slot or two on the county’s list of priorities for now.

“If we wanted to cut $200,000 out of there for 2008-2009, I would feel comfortable doing that,” he said.

And District 2 Supervisor Zack Burkett wondered if there was flexibility in the scope of the project, by concentrating efforts in high-density population areas.

“Is there a way to bring the emphasis back to major corridors?” he asked.

But Rolfe confirmed that was already the case.

“Our interest now is in Barboursville, Somerset, the town of Orange and Gordonsville,” he said. “I’m looking at whether we need to tweak the tower study.” Rolfe added that remaining areas of the county have high-speed internet access through the private sector. Rolfe plans to attend a meeting with several private sector providers this week, he said, to take a fresh look at the county’s needs.

“Here’s a suggestion,” Frame offered, “Pull $200,000 out of it now.”

“I may be able to come back and say we can take out more,” Rolfe said.

And supervisors agreed with Frame’s recommendation to remove $200,000 from the project’s funding.

The proposed budget includes $334,000 for water reserve implementation, another long-term county initiative. Supervisors wondered if there was money to be saved there. But Rolfe didn’t advocate fiscal corner-cutting when it comes to a reliable water supply.

“They’re telling us we’re not going to have enough water to meet our demand in seven years,” Rolfe said. “You’ll see a water study that will say ‘If you want water for the county for the next 50 years, you’re going to have to create two new water impoundments,’” Rolfe told the board. “You have to find a river with adequate flows, dig a hole some distance away and pump the water into it during high-flow periods. It will also take a water treatment facility and wells coming in line.”

And, according to Rolfe, that critical--albeit expensive--plan would be performed only by the county.

“It’s really the town of Orange that should be driving this boat, or the RSA. Without it, we could end up at a point, like we did five years ago, where the town’s running around telling people you can’t use anymore water. We came within a day of that last summer,” he said.

Rolfe said planning for, and funding a long-term water supply was something local citizens had requested from county officials. “They’re the ones that voted for you,” Rolfe reminded the board.

District 3 Supervisor Teel Goodwin supported funding a long-term water supply implementation plan.

“That’s just plain common sense, making sure you have enough water to rely on,” he said. Anyone who had to use a Porta-Potty during the height of the drought, he added, knows the situation was an embarrassment for local government.

Supervisors also agreed to make a change to the school board’s request to raise teacher salaries in the next fiscal year.

“The board reduced the school funding by $443,053 that was identified as step increases. At the request of supervisors, the school board provided data regarding the number of teachers at each step, and they do not significantly fluctuate from year to year. Therefore, the school can continue to give steps, but due to turnover, no additional funding is required,” Karasinski said.

But teacher salary increases weren’t the only thing supervisors trimmed from the school budget. Plans to pay for $1.1 million in construction and repair projects at county schools won’t be what school officials were hoping for in 2008-2009.

“They put in their budget $500,000 for facilities and yet they want another $1.1 million,” Frame said. Without a breakdown detailing what projects were planned by school officials, and in what manner the money would be spent, Frame suggested CIP money could be disbursed to school officials after they presented individual projects to the supervisors.

“The school board did not tell us where that money is going to go. They have not said to which capital projects they will apply that money. They just have not told us that,” Orange County Director of Strategic Planning Debbie Kendall confirmed to the board.

“If we dropped that extra 1,135,000, it would be a cent and a half on the tax rate,” District 1 Supervisor Mark Johnson observed.

And finally, supervisors concurred with Johnson’s suggestion: “We leave the $460,000 for the buses in their budget. The $500,000, we leave it in the capital improvements plan. The million, we drop out.”

And the $500,000 supervisors actually granted to the schools came with a stipulation from Frame.

“We’re giving them what they asked for in their budget, but they’re going to have to come to us project by project,” he said.

Meanwhile, Goodwin wondered about a roof repair estimate listed in the county capital improvements plan.

Roof repairs at the courthouse and clerk’s building that total $90,000 seemed obscenely high, he said. Based on his calculations, the figure for fixing the roof should be closer to $20,000.

“We had a consultant come in and do a roof study and this is where we got this,” Rolfe explained. A second look at the repair specs, he agreed, was in order.

Frame took a closer look at the $50,928 funding recommended for the 2008-2009 budget’s “cultural enrichment” category. Agencies and organizations whose funding comes through this category include some of the county’s historic and arts resources, along with the fair, and several community activity organizations. A total of $42,619 was divided between these groups, agencies and organizations in the previous year’s budget; the total they requested for FY 2008-2009 was more than double that.

One relatively big ticket item under the cultural enrichment heading was a $10,000 request for Gordonsville’s Exchange Hotel. The museum’s roof is in a dismal state of disrepair. In the proposed budget, county staff recommended funding $7,500 of the $10,000 request.

“Given that we’re doing a lot of slashing and burning, showing an increase in this thing here doesn’t seem appropriate,” Frame reasoned. “It’s a bad message when we’re handing out money to other people and we’re talking about cutting childcare.”

Pace took exception to Frame’s comparison of the Exchange Hotel to the Child Garden. “This is bringing a lot of money into the county! The Child Garden has been asked for three years to break even.”

Burkett championed the Exchange Hotel’s cause, and added that the museum served the county well as a tourist attraction.
“They’ve got a specific problem this year and for the first time, they’ve asked us for money,” he said.

Instead of across-the-board funding in the cultural enrichment category, Frame suggested funding the category as recommended. But this year, he continued, that funding would be shifted around and allocated among individual programs.

In the end, there would be no cuts to the county’s cultural enrichment, but the dollars would be divided differently than first planned.

County officials reacted to a deluge of public outcry following a recommendation to cut the Child Garden daycare program in the first draft of next year’s budget.

Burkett admitted that he’d heard more than an earful from concerned constituents who relied on county-subsidized before-school and after-school daycare at the Child Garden. But, he added, “I have trouble with us being in the babysitting business.”

Rolfe said his office had developed several propositions that could potentially keep the daycare resource’s doors open.

“We seem to have touched a very sensitive nerve in the community,” he began.

But in spite of the program’s apparent value to citizens, “We are bleeding to the tune of about $10,000 a month in the budget,” he said, “Which is really what prompted me to say ‘Let’s unload the thing.’ We have been working on this the entire time I’ve been here, trying to get it to a break-even situation. We do have some suggestions,” he said.

Some of the changes Rolfe proposed for the Child Garden included an increasing the amount county employees would pay. A 50 percent employee rate reduction was already cut last year to half that. Also, Rolfe proposed that out-of-county residents should pay more than Orange County residents who use the service.

Child Garden, Rolfe said, was originally designed to serve Orange County teachers’ daycare needs. The service was offered in exchange for rent in a school-owned facility. But currently, the county pays $1,200 a month in rent to the school system. Rolfe said he would like to revert back to the free rent in exchange for convenient childcare arrangement.

“The school system dumps some special-needs children there in the afternoons that require one-on-one care,” Rolfe said. The result of that practice, he continued, was in higher cost to the county, because a larger staff was required. The county should have the right to refuse service, Rolfe said. Alternately, the school system should be required to pay for specialized attention for special-needs children.

“I’m not trying to be heartless here. We think that’s a cost the school system or the parents should absorb, not us,” Rolfe said.

Department of Social Services, until recently, paid 100 percent of the daycare rates for the children who qualified, according to Rolfe. But after a fourth private sector day care opened in the county, social services pays only an average rate based on available childcare in the county.
The county’s cost to make up the difference after social service’s diminished payments equals $30,000 to $40,000 per year. Rolfe suggested charging a co-payment, where applicable, to cover the difference.

“There are going to have be some major changes to make this thing work,” Rolfe said. “I just don’t know if we’ll ever make this work.”
The board was unable to make a definitive decision on the sensitive matter, however. The possibility of turning the daycare over to the private sector had yet to be explored.

“We’ve already been contacted by someone in the private sector that wants to come in and talk,” Rolfe said.

But apparently, there were other issues preventing the board from making a decision about Child Garden.

“I think government has got its nose in a whole lot of places it shouldn’t be,” Johnson said. “Private sector can always do things less expensively than government.”

One work session remains, on March 13 to discuss and analyze the proposed budget before a public hearing April 8. They will vote on whether to adopt the proposed 2008-2009 budget April 15.