Apparently, No Raises for County Employees;
Budget Again to Run at a Deficit
With no discussion, the Glasscock County Commissioners’ Court Sept. 9 declined to include pay raises for county employees in the 2002-03 budget. Several department heads had earlier requested raises for themselves and their staffs, and there had been some talk of an across-the-board raise, but in its latest work on the new budget, the court included no raises.
As the budget stands now, the county will operate with a deficit of $190,000, with income of $2.3 million and expenditures of $2.5 million, and an additional $25,000 to $40,000 will have to be added to the budget for a new courthouse roof ($10,000 is already in the budget for courthouse repairs). All budget figures are and will remain tentative until the budget is formally adopted on Sept. 30.
The tax rate will presumably be set at $.5288 (53 cents) for maintenance and operation plus five cents debt service for the community center totaling $.5788 per $100 valuation, up three percent from last year’s rate, and the maximum rate possible unless the county publishes notices and holds a public hearing. The effective rate is 56 cents. The county’s tax base has dropped $80 million from last year. The tax rate will be set Sept. 30.
The county court has been working to trim the budget in the face of lower revenues and declining cash reserves.
County Treasurer Alan Dierschke has said the county needs to raise its cash reserves.
Commissioner Jimmy Strube said, “I don’t know where else to cut the budget; we’ve been cutting for 3 or 4 years.”
Commissioner Michael Hoch said the court has cut padding and reduced the county’s deficit with this budget.
Court Against Reducing Number of Maintainers
In that regard, Commissioner Mark Halfmann again argued for cutting back to three maintainers (or two) instead of the usual four, but found little support for that idea from the court. Halfmann said the amount of paving that has been done should enable the county to eliminate some of the expensive maintainers and reduce some personnel costs. He said the county is now operating fine with one set of dump trucks. Halfmann had made the same argument for eliminating a maintainer two years ago, when it was his precinct’s turn for a new maintainer. He got no support for sharing maintainers then either, and so chose at that time to keep his old machine rather than buy a new one. (This year, it is Commissioner Hugh Schafer’s turn for a new machine, with $100,000 budgeted for it.)
Hoch said, as he said two years ago, that he didn’t think having four bosses and three maintainers was workable. He said, “When we get further along, we can scale back, but right now, we would have to unitize to make it work.” He said the paving requires that a much better base be built than is necessary for unpaved roads, and building that base takes time and equipment.
County Judge Wilburn Bednar agreed that having fewer maintainers would require that the county “ …unitize, and have someone in charge of all roads and prioritize where to use equipment.”
Strube said, “We can probably cut back two to four years down the road.”
Most County Road Paving Done
Last month, commissioners gave this newsletter the following figures regarding the number of miles of paved and unpaved roads in each precinct: Precinct 1 (Strube) paved 45, unpaved 10, with no roads in Garden City; Precinct 2 (Halfmann) paved 33, unpaved 19, plus 2 paved and 1 unpaved in Garden City; Precinct 3 (Schafer) paved 23, unpaved 26, with some roads in Garden City; Precinct 4 (Hoch) paved 41, unpaved 19, with 4 miles paved in Garden City.
But commissioners have never intended to pave every mile of county roads. At the court meeting Sept. 9, the commissioners said they want to pave only about 25 more miles. Strube plans 2 more miles; Halfmann plans 6 to 8 more; Schafer wants 6 more paved, and Hoch plans 9 more miles of paving.