First Budget Hearing

Yesterday evening the Board of County Commissioners held our first of two required budget hearings.  The second and final hearing will occur on September 26th at 5:31 PM in the commission's chambers.

Last night's two-hour meeting was a mix of satisfaction and consternation for me...Satisfied that we did what we needed to do--consternation in that we did not settle the issue of where to allocate the $3.75Million dollars staff was able to identify and put on the table.  more about this later...but first, the meeting itself.

After hearing a lot of rhetoric about how we don't want to cut any items, can't cut, haven't cut "Squat"-- I put a bulls eye on one huge target--the $455K that we spend to partially fund Escambia Community Clinics.  This organization does great things for the medically vulnerable in the community, so my idea to slash $100K from their budget was not a reflection upon their worth or the way they do their work.  It was simply a function of the fact that ECC receives about 30% of all of the discretionary allotment pool for all of our outside agencies.  They employ 12 Medical Doctors (Starting pay $160,000 and several work at other hospitals as well), have multiple funding sources, and according to the director who spoke at the podium---they could have absorbed a cut this size.
So I said I would support cutting $100K from that group to get the ball rolling.  Nobody wanted to touch it. "If we can't even agree to cuts from this group, one of the largest outside organization recipients of funding--I doubt we will agree to cut anything"  I stated.  I was right.  I then suggested we reduce each group's allocation by 15%--again, nobody had an appetite to do this.  At our last workshop, we had all agreed to keep the funding levels where we left them, but I would have been willing to cut more.  People talked about cuts--but in reality only certain entities or groups were or


 ever would have been the target of any cuts.  That was my perception of the situation.

A motion was made to slash $150,000 from PEDC, which died for lack of a second. I don't support that because we need to have a sales force out and about beating the bushes to bring companies here.  We need to be diligent about this or other communities will continue to beat us to the punch.  To cut PEDC would be similar to a farmer eating his seed corn--meaning no more corn, no more crops--ever.

A motion was made to eliminate district discretionary funds of $50K per commissioner, and it, too, died for lack of a second.  Again--I perceived this as grandstanding.  The ability to have a pot of money that can be utilized for the public good in each distinct district is important, and each item from the discretionary funds of one commissioner must be approved by all commissioners--so it's not like these funds are being used in a nefarious, illegal manner.

We approved the millage level at last year's level, and then we approved the non ad valorem assessments.  We heard from several public speakers--including many of the money seeking, non-profit organization Directors.

We ended the meeting with an interesting presentation about additional funding sources staff identified, totaling about $3.75 Million dollars.  How will the board vote to utilize these funds?  I know how I will vote on this.