Grundy County Faces Looming Budget Crisis

by Emily Partin, Special to the Messenger

As a county commissioner, this is my explanation of the current state of the Grundy County budget. I present this as an attempt to provide the public with needed information. 

The commissioners have approached the issue with due diligence. The budget is lean. The money needed is to balance the budget, not build the jail. The operation of the new jail is a factor in the current decision-making. If you read the entire report you will be better informed. Please take the time to become informed.

So where are we today? Not in as good shape as many of us thought. The county’s fund balance is $770,889 in the black, but the problem is that it is shrinking. 

Having money in a “fund balance” is necessary to maintain good standing with creditors. Consider your own checking account. Most of us try to keep a little money in the bank to cover any checks we write before our monthly paycheck gets deposited. If we do not have any extra, we run the risk of having an overdrawn account.

Until recently, Grundy County has been very fortunate to have a healthy fund balance because we were able to create a nice little “nest egg” during years when revenues were greater than expenditures. This is no longer true. For the past few years the situation has reversed, and expenditures in the county have exceeded revenues. 

How is revenue generated at the county level? Generally speaking, Grundy County government runs on funds collected from personal property taxes, sales taxes, fines and fees, and state-generated revenue from gasoline and other taxes. When setting a budget, as commissioners, we have to estimate how much money will come from all of these sources. We try to make a conservative estimate so as not to “count our chickens before they hatch.”

How, then, did expenditures get ahead of revenues? There are many reasons for this, all of which are legitimate. Maintenance on county buildings, state mandated cost-of-living increases in salaries for staff and officials, outsourcing of inmates due to overcrowding at the jail, increase in medical bills for inmates and increases in utilities are just a few examples of budget expenditures that have increased and will likely continue to do so. 

To keep up with these increasing costs, the county has dipped into the fund balance instead of increasing revenues by raising taxes. Obviously, we cannot continue to do this. The fund balance is shrinking, and costs continue to rise. In fact, we are now faced with an even greater expenditure ahead, the operating of the new jail that is expected to be completed in the summer of 2015. 

The time has come when the county commission must generate more revenue. Taking this step will not be popular because, no matter what we do, it will hit the citizens in their wallets. We have to look at what is most effective.