Crawford County officials facing budget shortfall, possible job cuts

Even after two rounds of finance committee meetings meant to slash the budget line item by line item, the Crawford County Quorum Court is still facing a county general budget shortfall of $372,539 for fiscal year 2015.

Requests for expenditures by all county departments totaled $7.226 million at the start of the budget cycle, but County Treasurer Beverly Pyle said the county only has anticipated revenues of $6.817 million.

Speaking Thursday (Oct. 30), Pyle said the county has been hit with decreases in anticipated revenues following the financial crisis of 2008 and has only recently began to rebound. The anticipated revenues are about $220,313 less than the 2014 county general budget of $7.037 million.

Attempts to reach Pyle for an explanation of the reduction in anticipated revenues were unsuccessful Monday (Nov. 3), though individuals with knowledge of the financial situation at the county said tax revenues for the year were simply lower than anticipated for fiscal year 2014, which lead to the downward estimate for the upcoming budget.

Crawford County Tax Collector Kevin Pixley said collections were not down too much, though he said taxes associated with mineral rights had been down the most of any in the county. He said it was due to changes in state law and was beyond the control of the county.

But he said of the funds collected by his office, only about 20% directly benefit the general fund, meaning that if an additional $200,000 were collected, about $40,000 would go to support the general fund.

"The losses are coming from other funds," he added, noting that the majority of monies collected through his office benefit the county's school districts in Alma, Cedarville, Mountainburg, Mulberry-Pleasant View and Van Buren.

He said it is difficult to determine why anticipated revenues would be down more than $200,000 for county general since the taxes that benefit the fund are not too far off last year.

"The collections are about the same as last year. We're probably within $5,000 as far as county general. I'm going to close the tax book this week, which will tell me where the delinquencies are at," Pixley said.

Putting a strain on efforts to trim the budget is a rule adopted by the budget committee that prevents the quorum court from eliminating funding from estimated personnel services, which includes salaries, according to County Judge John Hall.

He said with the county still needing to cut more than $370,000 to meet its budget, the quorum court may need to rescind its own rule and look at the possibility of personnel cuts.

"Now the Quorum Court in their diligence of trying to develop a balanced budget that we can pass in December has really not realized the urgency of the situation, I don't think, that faces us. There's no way that the process that they're going through right now will be able to take that much money out of the budget without getting some revenue somewhere or cutting some positions somewhere. We can't nickel and dime this thing like we have been doing and come up with the type of money it's going to take to get us a balanced budget."

Pixley said the county has already raised taxes on its residents, raising the millage that benefits the general fund from 1.9 mils to 2.9 mils following fiscal year 2011. That total, he said, raised "roughly $650,000 in revenue for county general."

The year the county raised taxes it was facing a budget shortfall of $1 million, which Pixley said "just filled that hole. If we hadn't raised the millage, we'd have a $1 million hole, not a $375,000 hole."

But any talk of raising the millage anymore, Hall said, would be stopped by his office. He said the quorum court and the county's departments must learn to live within its budgets and that means hard decisions will have to be made without a tax increase.

"One thing that's off the table – and you can quote this – there will be no millage increase. I will veto any millage increase if it is brought up. I will oppose it and I will veto it. We are not raising millages. We're not going to do it. I oppose it 100%."

Reached for comment, Quorum Court Finance Committee Chair Mary Jan Blount declined to discuss revenue issues and cuts, saying, "Let's just leave it (my comments) as right now, we're reviewing all the items on the budget. I can't give a clear answer as to where we are able to cut. We're looking at each budget line item by line item to see where there are possibility of cuts. … We're just separately looking at each line item to see where there are opportunities to cut expenses."