For evidence that the nationwide slowdown in the economy has reached Blaine County, look no further than the county's budget for the 2009 fiscal year.
During their meeting Tuesday, Blaine County Commissioners approved a $22.7 million budget for the year, which begins Oct. 1.
This is significantly less than the county's $29 million budget for fiscal 2008. However, the 2008 increase was largely due to a $7.5 million payment to help fund construction of the new Blaine County public safety facility, which had its official grand opening in July.
Still, the coming year's budget is about the same as the 2007 fiscal year budget amount of just over $22 million.
There are several clear differences between the finalized 2009 budget and previous budgets, one county official noted.
"Revenue is down and we're not dipping into the reserve as heavily as we have in the past," said Blaine County Clerk JoLynn Drage.
County commissioners have made it a goal to cease dipping into county reserves and balance the county's budget within three years, she said.
"We have to get back to where we actually have a balanced budget," she said.
Because of the budget shortfalls, cuts were made to each of the county's departments, Drage said. The reductions will begin the process of weaning the county from the use of reserve funds, which are set aside for emergency uses. The reserve funds also pay for county activities between the months of October and early January, when property taxes begin to flow in, Drage said.
"Everybody reduced (their budgets) this year to help us reach that goal," she said.
Planning for the 2009 budget, county officials had hoped to not raise property taxes above the 2008 figures due to the lean economic times.
Though Idaho law allows counties and municipalities to raise property taxes by up to 3 percent each year, county commissioners asked their budget team to come to them with a preliminary budget that didn't take advantage of that ability to raise property taxes. Anything not funded in the proposed budget that would require the county to raise property taxes—such as funding requests from local nonprofits, initiatives or certain county projects—were considered by the budget team on a case-by-case basis.
In the end, the fact that too many funding needs would have been left on the cutting room floor forced the commissioners to take the state-authorized 3 percent property tax increase.
"It was not feasible to not take it this year," Drage said.
Only about a third of the county's revenue comes from property taxes. The remainder comes primarily from revenue sharing with the state on income and sales taxes, federal PILT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) payments, liquor sales, state gas tax monies and fees from building permits and land-use applications.
One of the major headaches faced by the commission this year was a doubling in the level of funding requests from local nonprofit organizations. In the end, the commission was only able to cover half the requests.
Two of the largest cuts the commissioners made to county departments were:
· Funding for the Blaine County Weed Department, which was dropped from $274,505 in 2008 to $244,865 for 2009 fiscal.
· Funding for the Blaine County Road and Bridge Department, reduced from more than $2.2 million in 2008 to about $1.8 million for 2009. However, the $400,000 difference is largely due to a one-time jump in 2008 figures for the East Fork Road project, county officials said.
