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Orange trims nearly $600K from budget
Orange department heads trim almost $580,000 in spendingDate published: 2/26/2009 BY ROBIN KNEPPER Belt-tightening by Orange County officials has produced another $579,884 in budget savings this year. County Administrator Bill Rolfe had asked all constitutional officers and department directors to review their current budgets, with a goal of 15 percent savings for each department. The net result was a $769,791 savings, with the Fire and EMS department leading with approximately $110,000. The Information Technology and Emergency Management departments also presented significant savings. Although the school system had also been asked to cut current-year spending by 15 percent, interim Superintendent Larry Massie was unable to return funds to the county coffers. After Tuesday afternoon's School Board budget work session, Massie explained that 80 percent of the schools' budget is salaries and benefits, which cannot be cut. Savings were made in other areas, he said. But no savings have been presented to the supervisors and Rolfe expressed his displeasure at the lack of School Board participation in spending cuts. "We dis-appropriated over $579,000 from the county budget," he said, "but the School Board was conspicuously absent. Everyone else scraped their budgets." The savings by county departments was reduced somewhat by increases in appropriations to the Central Virginia Regional Jail ($16,085); bank fees paid by the county treasurer ($20,000); Comprehensive Services Program ($128,414, the local match, which will increase the program budget to $1.2 million for this fiscal year); expert-witness fees ($7,500); and projected attorney fees ($17,908) not covered by the contingency fund. The contingency fund was depleted by an earlier unanimous vote of the supervisors to transfer its balance of $202,827 to the county attorney's budget to fund legal services. The projected cost to the county for contract legal services this fiscal year is $300,000, much of which is being used to defend the county from numerous lawsuits resulting from a subdivision ordinance enacted last year. On the plus side, Animal Shelter Director Beth Hamilton got thanks from the supervisors for securing a $16,290 grant from PetSmart Charities to be used for re-surfacing kennel floors, a mandate from the state Department of Agriculture. At the end of Tuesday's meeting, Rolfe gave supervisors his proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. He will give a detailed explanation of his $47 million spending plan at a work session tonight. The current fiscal year's amended budget is $51 million. The proposed spending plan calls for a 7.5 percent decrease in general-fund spending. Twenty-two staff cuts have already been announced and a tax increase on personal property is proposed. "It's a balanced, but not a pretty, budget," said Rolfe. He praised county staff for working hard to reduce current-year expenditures and decreasing spending in the next fiscal year. "We can't make ends meet without cuts," he said. Robin Knepper: 540/972-5701
Read more stories about Orange Date published: 2/26/2009
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