Crawford County Commissioners have asked each county department to roll back 2011 budget requests to 2010 figures.
Unfortunately, that rollback would still constitute a hike in the county mill levy.
Commissioners are planning another budget work session at 9 a.m. this morning.
According to figures from the Crawford County Clerk’s office, if departments were funded at their 2010 levels, the county would still have to raise the mill levy by just less than 4 mills. If commissioners were to sign off on level funding, the county’s mill levy would be 52.445. That is an increase over 2010’s mill levy of 48.478.
Due to the decrease in property valuation, the county would have to raise more dollars to keep level funding.
Commissioners said, this week, a mill levy increase of that much is not acceptable.
“We’re going to shave it down more,” said Commissioner Linda Grilz. “For me, 4 mills is too much.”
That means that county departments will have even less money than they received in 2010.
Grilz said that, if there was a mill levy increase, it would have to be no more than 1 mill.
“We are going to get it as close as we can to last year’s budget,” said Commissioner Ralph McGeorge.
As commissioners get into the waning weeks before budgets have to be finalized and set to Topeka, they realize that the pressure is on to fund county departments and keep property taxes down.
“We are the ones with the bulls eye on our back,” said Commissioner Bob Kmiec. “We will have to decide and they (county department heads) will have to live with it.”
In their last budget work session, commissioners asked department heads to reduce their budgets. In some cases that was done, but not every department head came back with new, cut numbers.
That has left the burden of cutting budgets to commissioners.
“A lot of the department heads have come back with new budgets and they know the situation we are in,” McGeorge said.
But, Grilz said that those department heads have to realize that the county cannot do business the way they used to because of a decrease in revenue.
“Change takes time and a lot of people have gotten into a comfort zone,” Grilz said. “We are asking them to do more with less.”
She added that there is something particular that she is looking for from those department heads, with regards to their 2011 budget.
“There has to be some kind of reduction,” Grilz said. “We’re making efforts, but I want them to tell me what their lean and mean breaking point is.”
Matthew Clark can be reached at matthew.clark@morningsun.net or at 620-231-2600, Ext. 140
