UPDATE: Firefighters, county reach agreement to forgo raises
INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Sheriff Deryl Loar is expected to stand his ground at a County budget meeting Wednesday and ask for more money in a year when the county is cutting the bottom line by 28 percent to keep taxes low.
The total proposed budget for 2010-2011 is $259 million, more than $100 million down from current expenditures.
The proposed cuts to the Sheriff’s Office and all other departments are the latest in four years of deep cuts to overhead and personnel. The result is expected staffing levels in the 2010-2011 year equal to the number of employees the county had in 1996, despite the rise in population over the past 14 years. “During the last four years, Board of County Commissioners departments have reduced staff by 206 full-time positions,” County Administrator Joe Baird stated in his budget message to the five commissioners.
This year’s cuts account for 50 of those jobs. The across-the-board reductions were in response not only to an anticipated 11.6 percent decline in property tax assessments resulting in $10.6 million less in property taxes, but also to budget constraints at the state level that would reduce revenue sharing trickling down from Tallahassee.
“We have attempted to hold the line on taxes by reducing expenses substantially in response to the declining tax roll,” Baird said.
Loar was asked by top county staff and the Board of County Commissioners to reduce his $42 million operating budget by 6 percent. Other departments have cut 10 percent or more, but Loar maintains that some of his fixed costs have skyrocketed and that any erosion of resources available to the Sheriff’s office would jeopardize his department’s mission of keeping local residents safe.
Last week, Loar took his budget pitch directly to the public and to the media during a presentation in his own auditorium at the Sheriff’s Office. The PowerPoint slideshow, which Loar said he would present at today’s workshop before the commissioners, is about an hour long. This might cause a shuffle in today’s workshop schedule if department heads are waiting behind Loar to present their own budgets.
At that presentation last week, Loar said he doesn’t see commissioners as an obstacle to his budget, saying that cutting the Sheriff’s Office budget would be like “taking a step back” from what he views as progress made in lower crime and better customer service.
“I am very confident and comfortable that they (commissioners) understand our position,” Loar said. “I don’t foresee that being a problem at all.”
The other hot-button budget issue also deals with resources dedicated to public safety. The Emergency Services District is slated to take a 7 percent or $2 million cut in spending, resulting from an anticipated $3 million reduction in assessments to this special taxing district.
The county and firefighters agreed Tuesday night to eliminate $437,000 in raises to which they were entitled this fiscal year by their union contract. In exchange the International Association of Firefighters Firemedics Local 2201 received a contract extension through 2013 and the ability to renegotiate the pact should economic conditions improve. The contract had been set to expire in 2011.
Loar is arguing that there are substantial reserves being held by the county to absorb his the increase in his budget request. Last week, he told the 25 people watching his budget presentation that the idea that taxes would need to be raised to fund the $3 million that makes up the difference between the 6 percent recommended cut and the amount he’s asking for is a scare tactic by top county staff.
“There are dollars in reserves that are sufficient to make these things whole,” Loar said last week. “I think your millage rate should be your last option when you have a tremendous amount in fund reserves.”
The Sheriff’s Office budget is expected to be heard at 1:35 p.m. in the commission chambers at the Indian River County Administration Complex, Building A. The workshops, which continue Thursday morning, will be televised.
The first public hearing of the budget that is hammered out in these workshops will be Sept. 8 and final budget is scheduled to be approved on Sept. 15. The new budget year begins Oct. 1.
Click here to read previous reporting on the Sheriff’s Office budget.
Click here to read more about the 2010-2011 county budget.
