The fall out from 'The Save Our Homes' legislation has the municipalities and the county government in an uproar. There is no extra money to spend and the powers that be are demanding up to 20% cuts in department budgets. Employees tend to be the largest part of a budget which means the potential loss of 20% of employees from each department being cut. County employees where initially told there would be no layoffs but then the rumors of potential cuts in the IT department and Public Safety have started filtrating into daily conversations in the center. 911 is safe so far but the commissioners are screaming about the overtime. I was told our overtime budget was 5x higher than any other department but we are also the only 24/7 department under the BOCC. E911 is still under staffed and have minimum employee requirements on a daily basis that have to be fulfilled.
The county administrators just finished a two day brainstorming meeting and now the sheriff is threatening to lay off 115 deputies. The clerks office is rumored to being laying off 8 employees based on job performance but I can't find anything to substantiate this rumor. The state has already proposed a drastically reduced budget to the governor and the court system is taking a pretty hefty cut. There will be layoff. It's coming but no one knows when.
I took the liberty of borrowing this list of items in the county from the Ft Pierce Tribune. Maybe it will give an idea of what the county admins are doing to economize. I read the opinions people spew and at one time I put my two cents worth but even I got tired of bantering with idiots how don't research or read before that make stupid comments. I linked this entry to the latest Tribune article. I feel bad for the admins who have to decide who leaves and who stays that can't be easy. The only good thing about this situation that I can think of, is if cuts are based by performance a lot of dead weight is trimmed that needed to be otherwise I feel bad for those who may loose their livelihood.
N THE CHOPPING BLOCK?
•Continue the employee hiring freeze (savings: $2.7 million).
•Stop paying for school resource officers (savings: $600,000).
•Close all libraries (except the main Fort Pierce library) one day per week (savings: $163,752).
•Cut money for outside agencies (such as the Council on Aging and Healthy Start) by 10 percent (savings: $2.2 million).
•Stop mowing medians and county right-of-ways (savings: $620,710).
•Cut money for financial recovery fund (savings: $2.75 million).
•No new capital projects or equipment purchases (savings: $11.8 million).
•No budget increases for clerk of court, supervisor of elections or sheriff's office (savings: $2.7 million).
COUNTY BUDGET NUMBERS
Projected shortfall in all county areas: $29.9 million
Projected shortfall after factoring in money set aside and other cost savings: $15 million
Projected general fund shortfall: $17.3 million
Projected general fund shortfall after factoring in money set aside and other cost savings: $6.3 million
Projected shortfall because of property tax reform over next five years (number provided by the state): $94.9 million
St. Lucie County (numbers subject to change)
No comments:
Post a Comment