County response to budget comments: Part 3

Historic City News has received a booklet of comments from residents who have asked questions regarding the proposed St. Johns County budget that have been answered by county administration and last revised on August 8, 2011.

Due to the volumes of calls and inquiries regarding the county budget, Historic City News has worked with District 1 County Commissioner Cyndi Stevenson to distribute these responses to commonly asked questions.

“We continue to work for ways to reduce the millage rate,” Stevenson told Historic City News reporters. “After 5 years of reductions it is becoming increasingly difficult to find significant reductions without reducing services that many in our community have come to value, especially in these difficult economic times.”

Historic City News will compile a list of these responses, each day for the next week.

There is a figure of $30 million for “radio conversion”. Despite requests from participants at our meeting, the County has still not supplied details of such radio conversion.

Response:

• $30 million was an early estimate of the cost of an 800 Megahertz emergency radio communication system with associated towers and land.

• The County has been in the process of establishing a Request for Proposals (RFP) detailing the exact system and seeking actual bids for its components. Until that process is complete, the actual costs of such a system will not be conclusively established.

• However, the County has publicly supplied basic details of such a system and staff has met with numerous citizens to answer questions and explain the process.

The politicians are threatening to close libraries and reduce ambulance services. But at the same time, they’re spending more and more money on new projects. What is their real priority?

Response:

• County government spending can be divided into operations and capital projects such as buildings, parks, roads, etc. Capital projects generally are either debt financed or funded through existing revenues. Dedicated revenue sources such as sales tax often are limited to be used only for capital projects and are unable to legally be used for operations.

• Recurring revenues are the ones that must be used to balance with total spending for operations. Therefore, avoiding one-time spending for new projects does not solve the need to balance recurring revenues with recurring operations costs, but merely delays addressing it.

The County Commission claims they don’t have the money to light athletic fields, but last month they spent $500,000 acquiring new fields.

Response:

• Spending for new athletic fields was in response to contractual obligations dating from 2004 relative to property given to the County. One-time capital project spending does not ordinarily address recurring operating spending as represented by the recurring cost of field lighting.

Each of the County Commissioners ran for office as a ‘fiscal conservative’ promising to keep taxes low.

Response:

• County property taxes and the County budget have decreased every year since 2007.

The proposed millage rate increase will maintain County property taxes at around 2006 levels, despite a County population increase of almost 30,000 or 18% since that time. $2 million in overtime including $33,067 at Animal Control.

Response:

• Of the $2 million in overtime in FY 2011, $1.4 million (72%) is related to Fire Rescue and, therefore, falls basically under the associated Union contract which the County is currently renegotiating.

• Of the remaining $0.6 million, only $130,356 is incurred by the General Fund of which Animal Control is the largest remaining component at $33,067.

• Even a $25,000 full-time salary position would involve about a 50% benefit factor and therefore would cost more than the Animal Control department overtime. Very little, if any, savings is therefore indicated.

$309,907 on attorney’s fees although the County employs attorneys.

Response:

• The County incurs outside attorney fees primarily for specialized personnel legal matters (almost 50% of the total), specialized growth management issues relating to potential lawsuits from property holders and other associated legal matters, and Bond Disclosure Counsel (a standard outside contract for required debt management).

• The County attorney staff does not specialize in these legal areas which can involve much larger potential legal claim exposure to the County and specialized staff would likely be difficult and expensive to find. In addition, the need for specialized legal assistance varies over time and adding such legal counsel to the County’s staff could be more, not less, expensive than the current arrangement.

$4.5 million on Libraries (with that money you could buy 18,000 students a Kindle and close the libraries). Have you considered a fee for service arrangement for the libraries?

Response:

• The County has carefully followed a master development plan for the provision of community library services. Library Services has its own constituent support and is often seen as an asset to the County.

• Where customary, the County has implemented library service fees and does charge for out-of-County users.

• In 2010 the County libraries reported 100,095 registered library card holders.

• For the most part, citizens expect that their taxes provide for County library services.

$1.2 million of bad debt expenses.

Response:

• The $1.2 million of bad debt expenses in FY 2011 relate entirely to County Ambulance Services (EMS) and are based upon $5.2 million of Ambulance Services charges or about 23% of charges.

• National averages for collecting ambulance service charges center around 25% bad debt.

• A high degree of these bad debt accounts involve low income and transient population.

• While these accounts are pursued by collection agencies and reported to Credit Bureaus, there is minimal effect as to final collection.

$3.2 million in aid to private organizations.

Response:

• Of the $3.2 million in FY 2011, $2 million pertains to the General Fund which includes $993,500 paid to Flagler Hospital for maintaining a Healthcare Clinic.

• The remaining $1 million in the General Fund goes to various independent social agencies for the contracting of community services that the County does not directly provide.

$44,654 on home buyer education.

Response:

• Home buyer education falls under the County’s Housing and Community Development department and targets low income groups who primarily qualify for housing down payment assistance.

• These targeted groups are not the most knowledgeable in this process and home ownership, even at this modest level, promotes community development and education.

$1.79 million on “consulting services”.

Response:

• Of the $1.79 million in FY 2011, only $370,642 is associated with the General Fund, with the County Utility Services representing almost half of the remainder.

• Of the $370,642, $281,172 relates to Growth Management services and much of this total represents matching grant expenditures for particular beautification or historic restoration community projects.

• Consulting services for Utility Services relates primarily to infrastructure management and highly specialized engineering or Geographic Information System (GIS) enhancements.