Commissioners Eddie Goodwin, Kenny Goodwin, and Keith Nixon met with County Manager Peter Rascoe and Finance Officer Lisa Jones this morning to review the latest Budget figures for FY 2010-11.Projected Expenses exceed Projected Revenues by around $189,000.
Expected revenues are about $445,000 more than this year's budget, and had expenses remained the same as last year we would actually have some breathing room. But projected costs from Emergency Services come to $661,000 where the county had expected to contribute nothing. There are several big ticket items requested: a new ambulance at $117,000 (which seemed to be a surprise to several commissioners) and new cardiac monitors for each ambulance ($175,000 total.) The county owns 8 ambulances.
Most attention focused on EMS, which in addition to 911 emergency service also does routine medical pick up and delivery of folks to various local and distant medical facilities. EMS is supposed to be an Enterprise Fund, meaning it is self supporting financially, but it has not been doing this. Commissioners discussed several options toward making EMS self supporting, including privatizing the non-emergency portion.
The 3 commissioners at this meeting seemed to be in agreement that the EMS Manager should be given "X" amount of funds and then he should determine the priorities of expenditures, rather than the Board micro-managing the EMS budget, and will discuss this with the entire Board at its April 28th meeting. The EMS director will be at that meeting to answer commissioner questions.
The county is building up the Reserve Fund to its required 8% of the General Fund budget, and is now close to $600,000 toward approx $1,000,000 needed.
The Budget envisions county employees will receive 100% of their pay next year, instead of the reduced hours they have been working under the furlough system.
There was no discussion of property tax increases at this meeting, and I got the impression that the Budget could be balanced without draconian methods required, unlike some surrounding counties that are experiencing a much worse situation because they did not have to really tighten up last year.
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