County ready to hear public budget ideas

By David Steinkraus
Journal Times

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 9:51 PM CDT

IVES GROVE — The County Board will listen to the public Thursday night about the proposed 2009 county budget.

“I’m hoping somebody comes to the meeting,” said Supervisor Karen Nelson, who chairs the board’s Finance Committee. Only three citizens attended the series of committee meetings last week when department heads appeared to talk about their budgets and how they were composed, she said.

Total proposed expenditures would increase by slightly more than 1 percent under County Executive William McReynolds’ budget. The total county levy will increase slightly more than 2 percent.

Although the economy is ailing, there is not necessarily any adjustment to be made in the county budget. For some agencies, such as Human Services which has the Workforce Development Center, the county is merely a pass-through for a large amount of state money, officials said.

“The answer is this budget’s been very carefully thought through by Human Services — by every department — and Human Services does a superb job of thinking it through,” said county spokesman Geoff Greiveldinger.

In another area where one might expect adjustments, economic development, spending is down 18 percent. That’s due to the end of several special surveys, Greiveldinger said.

It’s also not going up “because I think that it is incumbent on us in times of economic concern to tighten our belts just like businesses are,” said Gordy Kacala, executive director of the Racine County Economic Development Corp. Second, there are other funding sources for such work, and the county has sought them out, he said, and third, priming the economic pump with a development strategy is work for the long term. “So increasing revenue in any one year I don’t think is going to make a difference,” he said.

Budget conversations every year focus on how much money the county proposes to spend, but Nelson said another story this year is revenue. “Just as the average person has been impacted with their investments, so has the county.”

Fees which the county collects for land-use planning are down because no one is building houses and taking out permits. The county’s investments, required to be low-risk and thus low-return, are also producing less. Three months ago, the county’s investment bankers suggested an estimated revenue for next year of 3.5 percent, and now that’s not even close, Nelson said. It’s maybe 1.5 percent, which means the county will have about $300,000 less in investment income.

Nelson said she does not expect supervisors will seek to trim extra money now in expectation of a worsening economy. On the positive side, she said, the county has been very conservative in its borrowing, has a good bond rating, and a good-sized reserve fund. “We’re like everyone else, just trying to ride this out.”

Nelson said the Finance Committee plans to meet on Wednesday to discuss whether there should be changes to the budget.

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