Rec budget wrecked

By Hannah Wever
Published: March 20, 2008

Some Orange County parents might be saving a penny or two on their taxes next year, but they might be making up the difference in child care and recreational activities.

With a deadline looming by which to officially declare any tax increase in next year’s budget, the Orange County Board of Supervisors cut three quarters of a million dollars from the proposed budget and took a cent of the tax rate. But the Child Garden will close, and people who want to participate in the county’s parks and recreation activities will pay more to play.

Orange County Administrator Bill Rolfe suggested to supervisors that daycare programs at several county schools could be adjusted to become more financially viable. Elimination of the before and after school daycare at Orange Elementary School, where only a handful of children receive daycare, and staffing changes in remaining programs, Rolfe said, would result in savings. And supervisors took his advice.

“We could make those programs stand on their feet and eliminate $120,000 of parks and recreation expenses,” Rolfe said.

While the decision was a relatively simple one for supervisors to make, the question of what to do about the Child Garden was more like the agony of deciding if and when to euthanize a beloved but languishing pet. Child Garden, despite its popularity with parents who patronize the program, has been costing the county thousands of dollars and unable to match it’s revenues to expenditures for years.

District 5 Supervisor Lee Frame said he’d like to see Child Garden remain open, but only if it could break even.

Teel Goodwin, Zack Burkett and Teri Pace, of Districts 2, 3 and 4, respectively said they thought privatization of the facility was a better option. But Goodwin, whose own children attend daycare, sympathized with the plight of parents who must find affordable, quality daycare.

Goodwin said he had mixed feelings about closing Child Garden.

Childcare is extremely hard to find, he added. And losing the services of Child Garden would cause problems for county employees, who receive a discounted rate, he said. “But for what we’re trying to do with the budget, I don’t know how to keep it.”

But Rolfe was dubious that the daycare center could ever prosper. And, he added, it would continue to hemorrhage money as long as the county continued to operate it.

“I don’t think you can put that thing on a cost-efficient basis,” Rolfe said. And allowing it to remain open, on the county dollar, until someone in the private sector agreed to take over was illogical.

“I think it’s a mistake to take it into the next year,” Burkett said.
“I do, too,” Pace agreed.

And ultimately, supervisors decided it was time to pull the plug on the program. The Child Garden’s doors will close for good in August.
“It’s an unfortunate demise,” Rolfe said.

Director of Parks and Recreation Debra Bickley was on hand to help supervisors understand the long list of expenses associated with programs in her department. As proposed, the parks and recreation department accounted for a significant portion of the budget: $290,270 for administration, $304,303 for programs and $154,820 for facilities.
And in spite of Bickley’s “substantial cutting everywhere,” county officials weren’t satisfied with the amount of money contributed by the county versus the amount of revenue generated by parks and recreation programs.

Supervisors pored over every item in Bickley’ s budget breakdown. But to analyze each item from swimming in Gordonsville to soccer in Locust Grove, it seemed, was just a monument to micromanagement.

“I didn’t run for the board so I could run the rec department or these other things,” Johnson declared. “We need to make big decisions. In terms of having a large hole in the ground with water in it so people can swim is costing us $25,000 a year. It needs to come closer to paying for itself. I want to stop pouring money into a hole.”

Johnson advocated raising rates for participating in all parks and recreation activities, particularly the rates paid by out-of-county residents, he said. “I don’t want to gang up on aquatics. I want to apply this across the board,” he added.

Frame suggested the county draw the line at 15 percent subsidization of parks and rec programs. After that, they’re on their own, relying on revenue or donations to break even or better. Rates to participate would have to be raised.

The solution seemed equitable to Goodwin.

“We want to facilitate people who want to use parks and recreation programs,” he reasoned, not tax to death the public who don’t even participate. “We do enough of that anyway,” he said.

Rolfe worried there might be “sticker shock,” and cautioned supervisors to be ready for an onslaught of complaint from the community.

“We’re talking some very large magnitude changes,” he said. And, he added, the parks and rec savings plan would backfire if folks found fees to be prohibitive. “If we go up six times whatever we’re charging, I don’t think people are going to show up.”

But perhaps county officials may feel their hands are tied.

“We just went through a massive reassessment last year. We’re looking at raising taxes this year, and we’ve chosen to build a $50 million school. Something’s going to have to give somewhere,” Johnson said.
Supervisors agreed to limit the amount of county contribution to each parks and recreation program at 15 percent.

And at the end of the evening, the proposed tax increase had been dropped to $.47, five cents more than the current tax rate.

“Child Garden and parks and recreation-we’ve made some pretty big chops there. We’ve made some big chops in the capital improvements plan and we’ve made at least a couple of chops in the schools,” Frame summarized.

By the evening’s end, county officials had made enough cuts to add up to a savings of $719,828. The supervisors’ decision to reduce funding for the parks and recreation to no greater than 15 percent per activity will save county taxpayers $521,075. But keeping the Child Garden’s doors open for an additional month beyond their contractual agreement will cost taxpayers $25,000. Finally, supervisors reduced the amount of money Orange County Schools requested for a teacher salary raise next year. Educators will get a 4.5 percent increase rather than the 5.5 percent raise school officials first requested. But that saves taxpayers $214,753.

With the cuts to parks and recreation, Child Garden and teacher raises, as well as slashes to other programs in prior work sessions, the proposed tax rate was cut to $0.47 per $100 of assessed valuation. That’s an increase of $.05 over last year’s budget, but it’s down from the $.09 tax increase initially proposed in the 2009 budget.

The board of supervisors will hold a public hearing April 8 on the proposed 2008-2009 budget before they vote on whether to adopt it April 15.