May 1, 2012

Because there have been so many different sets of numbers, one day a decit another a surplus, I asked a person who is a professional in budgets to look at the last 4 or 5 years of our operating budget...here is what they found...

Show me the numbers...or the money.

By Frederick Citizen

An analysis of the past several years of the Operating Budget. Shared by Valerie Dale & Stand Up Frederick budget from permitting and development review which was previously a separate enterprise fund budget with fees covering a high percentage of the budget. This is really not true. First, the cost of raises is $4.5 million and these two numbers alone do not add up to $11 million. Also, the total budget for permitting and development review last year was $4.9 million and $5.6 million the year before. So, how could the amount transferred to the general fund budget be a couple to 3 million more than the size of the budget??? 4. Press release says transfer to the re tax fund was $12 million. The most recent budget document shows the transfer to the re tax funds of $4.9 million. 5. The budget increases (most recent version) by $16.4 million over prior year or 3.66%. The budget is growing. They are not adopting a smaller budget. The last two years of the past board adopted smaller overall budgets. This BOCC's rst budget grew by $11 million or 2.5% and the upcoming budget is growing $15.4 million or 3.66%. They have set aside $3.0 million for the teacher pension shift which is likely to happen in the special session. They also set aside $750,000 for a reghter workers comp reserve also required during the legislative session. In addition to the budget growing $16.4 million, they have savings of about $1.5 million from renancing debt. So they have $17.9 million to spend. So where do they spend it: $4.5 million - step and 1% cola to county employees $2.0 million - Increase in MOE to BOE $4.9 million - Transfer to Fire Tax Fund $3.0 milion - reserve for teacher pension shift $0.750 million - reserve for workers comp for reghters $6.7 million - $100 property tax rebate $0.425 million - Transfer to Capital Budget $0.419 million - Transfer to Public Libraries ($1.0 million) - reduced spending on nursing homes ($.215 million) - reduction to non-prots ($3.6 million) - reduced spending on tax equity - from switching to tax differential in the City of Frederick = $17.8 million (numbers rounded so not exact. Bottom line - They have more money. Making different choices than you and I would make. Even if they only think they have 1 time money so giving a one time $100 rebate - could also give BOE one time help or could give non-prots one time money.

I read the budget documents today. Here are my observations: 1. The information in the press releases does not match the information in the budget documents. 2. The projected budget - original - for FY 13 was $479 million. Revised or more recent proposed budget for FY 13 going to public hearing is $466 million. Virtually the entire difference is due to a decline in the property tax revenues. It is surprising for property tax revenue projections to change this dramatically. It is very difcult to project income tax revenue in a shaky economy since income tax uctuates with the economy. While property tax revenue is declining due to assessments declining, the math is pretty straight forward and budget staff can usually project property tax revenue with fairly good accuracy. So what explains this difference. Legitimately, it could be that the budget staff is all new and inexperienced; or not so legitimate that Commissioner Young is not being straight forward with the numbers. If revenues are underestimated, the balance just falls to the bottom line 3. Spending on county agencies increases by $11 million. Press release says this is because of $8 million being shifted to operating