http://youtu.be/qGVpIjpu-iY
Doña Ana County is getting closer to passing a budget for fiscal year 2016 that totals close to $150 million.
Doña Ana County Commissioner Billy Garret says while this year’s budget doesn’t contain everything he hoped for he is pleased, and says the budget includes measures for the county to become more efficient.
“We can look for some improved efficiency within county government,” Garret said. “We have, for example, authorized some funds to do some work on creating a strategy for how to take care of county roads. That’s a big issue for county residents and we know that, we just need to get our arms wrapped around all of the issues because there’s a lot of issues with roads.”
The county is also including funds for salary increases for county employees to be implemented over a 2-year period.
“We know that county employee salaries are not really competitive with the area,” Garrett said. “And so, we’re looking to bring everybody up to the 37th percentile in terms of being competitive. What that means is, it’s not about everybody getting an increase. It’s those that are just below or that are significantly below the 37th percentile, they’ll have an increase. We thought that that would be good to phase that in over 2 years.”
Commissioner Ben Rawson says residents can expect the same level of service from the county, but he is concerned about the long-term effects of the county’s spending.
“So we’re going from $97 million to $148 million in the course of 8 years,” Rawson said. “And that’s a really big increase in the size of government and I think we have to be very careful because an increase of that nature in the size of government that doesn’t seem to be stopping is not a fundable source. We can’t keep going at this level of funding.”
He is also concerned about the way the county is using the additional Hold Harmless GRT tax money, the money is being used to fund items in the budget based on the resolution passed, while covering the county’s budget deficit. Rawson says many believed those departments would get additional funds.
“We passed a resolution that said we are going to spend the money this way,” Rawson said. “And it listed out three different categories of how we are going to spend the money. It was very clear, it didn’t say we are spending money on these particular ideas. It had dollar amounts with each one of them, and as you can see from the slides today it was very clear that that money instead of being used as we directed in that resolution, was used to sure up a budget shortfall.”
Commissioner Garret disagrees, and says the money is being used how it was intended.
“We’re maintaining the integrity of that resolution as we’re moving forward,” Garret said. “Some of the money is going to be in the budget and some of the money is going to be in reserves, in particular to deal with filling positions that are not currently filled, and in dealing with raises because those are going to be subject to negotiations with the unions.”
Doña Ana County Commission will have another work session for the budget on June 16th before it is ready for approval.
