Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The county’s budget for the coming fiscal year is in the process of being formulated, a veritable work-in-progress.
County officials have been holding weekly workshops during the last several weeks with the constitutional officers and department heads to get a feel for the latter’s proposed budgets and to hear the reasons for requested funding increases.
So far, the Jefferson County Commission has heard from building inspections, extension services, library, mosquito control, parks and recreation, county manager, planning, property appraiser, sheriff, fire and EMS, elections and solid waste. For the first time, a budget officer, Gus Rojas, is monitoring and helping guide the process.
Overall, the departments are reporting increases due to inflation, rising costs in utilities, health insurance, employer pension contributions, cost of living adjustments and the state-mandated minimum wage increase, which kicks in Sept. 30. Other budget increase requests are because of needs specific to particular operations, such as for the upgrade or replacement of equipment, the addition of personnel or to meet increased responsibilities.
Following are some of the more significant budget increase requests so far.
Topping the list is the Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Mac McNeill presented the commission with two increase scenarios, one for $505,000 and the other for $384,000. The difference between the two, he explained, related to the addition of a traffic unit.
“With the traffic position, we’re looking at a $505,000 increase,” McNeill said. “If you don’t want to do the traffic position, it’s a $384,000 increase.”
The commission indicated that it favored the $505,000 increase, noting that the additional traffic unit was needed for public safety, to curb speeding and other traffic violations. Additionally, such a unit will generate revenue through the issuance of traffic citations, of which fines the county gets a share.
The other increases, McNeill noted, resulted from higher medical and food costs for the inmates, as well as employers’ contributions to the state retirement system going up nearly four percent, which for his department translated into an extra $120,000 cost.
Another factor, he said, was pay compression or pay compensation for long-time employees whose salaries had been put near the salary range of less experienced employees when the state last year raised the starting salaries of deputies and correctional officers.
“Fortunately, we’re going to bring in $324,000 from the state,” McNeill said. “We got an $80,000 increase in the money to help pay for corrections and law enforcement. But we still have the compression of the ones not affected. This moves them up too, to push them away from starting salaries.” (The two amounts were subsequently amended to $343,000 and $75,000, respectively).
The second highest request was from the County Manager Office, which is showing a $223,500 increase in its budget, going from $180,000 in the current fiscal year to $403,500 in the coming fiscal year. Much of the increase results from personnel salaries and related benefits, especially as the position of county coordinator was upgraded to county manager and a budget officer hired, among other changes. The office also wants to acquire an electronic invoice processing platform that will represent an annual recurring expenditure of $50,000
Next highest was Emergency Medical Service (EMS), a component of Fire Rescue. Chief Derrick Burrus, who heads both fire and EMS, presented a budget with a $183,436.40 increase, bringing the EMS budget from $1,592,005 in the current fiscal year to $1,775,441 in the coming fiscal year. EMS recoups much of its expenses from the fees that it charges for its services, the collection of which fees has been improving in recent years. Still, the budget is requesting $250,075.40 from the general fund.
“Although we are seeing an increase in expenses, the ask out of the general fund is decreasing by $28,564,” Rojas noted. “Collections are on pace to meet the projected amount of $1.1 million for the current fiscal year. The trend in services used, and those collection efforts, will bring in the revenue to keep us balanced.”
Burrus is also asking for the addition of two new positions down the line.
“At some point you have to decide that it’s time,” Burrus said of the new hires. “We’re not adding a substation or manning an outside department, but 200 times this year, there were no units available in this county because everybody was out on a call. Fortunately, you don’t know that because we managed it somehow. Maybe there wasn’t a call, or we weren’t busy at that time, because sometimes, we’re not. But when we’re busy, it comes in waves, and we’ve got to be ready to go to work.”
“I try to sound the alarm before the emergency,” Burrus added Rojas noted that the new positions were “an additional ask” that sat outside of the workshopped budget. He identified the main drivers of the EMS budget increase to be overtime pay, the retirement rate increase and higher insurance costs, which totaled a combined $104,006.
The next highest ask came from the Supervisor of Elections Office, which is requesting a $147,423.48 increase over last year’s budget. Elections Supervisor Michelle Milligan explained that the increases aimed at creation of a new full-time position for the office, as well as expected election expenses in the coming cycle, along with mandated network security enhancements.
This office’s budget is going from $455,575 in the current fiscal year to a proposed $602,998 in the coming fiscal year. Included in the proposed budget are $340,598.40 for salaries, including the new employee and related benefits; $140,000 for elections expenses; and $35,000 for security enhancements, among other things.
Another of the bigger asks was from the Property Appraiser Office, whose budget is funded by the county and approved by the Florida Department of Revenue (FDOR). Property Appraiser Angela Gray is requesting an $81,116 increase, bringing the budget from $773,481.40 in the current fiscal year to $854,597 in the next. This office generates some of its funding from the fees it collects for administering the non-ad valorem special assessment rolls. The office also has the ability to seek grants or outside funding to help subsidize its operating costs.
Accounting for some of the increases, according to Gray, are the creation of a new position, reclassification of a part-time employee to full-time, increased payments because of employees’ upgraded certifications and increased cost of software and equipment rentals.
County officials are still awaiting the state’s revenue projections for the coming fiscal year, which will tell them about how much money the county can expect to receive in sales taxes, the local option gas tax and other state-tracked revenues. They expect to have the budget completed by mid September.Commissioners also are wrestling with the need to increase the fire and landfill assessments, with July 6 set as the day when they must make a decision on the amount of the increases.Still to be reviewed as of this report were the proposed budgets of the Clerk of Court, the courthouse, judicial services, capital projects and Road Department.