The main goal voiced by the Sampson County Board of Commissioners during a planning session earlier this year was to avoid a tax increase. Assistant county manager Susan Holder said that remains the top objective.
“What we will do is bring the board the proposed budget at our first meeting in June,” she said. That meeting is scheduled for June 7. “We will then ask them to adopt a work schedule for the budget.”
No dates have been set. The budget must be approved by June 30.
The county is already well into the budget process, as county’s departments submitted budgets in March and April. Those budgets have been reviewed throughout this month by Holder, finance officer David Clack and new county manager Ed Causey, who started at the post May 1. Since then, the three have then met with department heads to discuss their budgets, and possible modifications to them, on an individual basis.
“Obviously we were a little bit delayed in the process, but when Ed got here we hit the ground running,” said Holder. Meetings with departments have been productive, and have acted to give county officials a deeper look into needs of departments, past the numbers on paper.
“We’re having budget discussions based on what they submitted as their request,” Holder stated. “We are being very deliberate in those meetings. It is going well. The departments are very appreciative of the time we’ve been taking with them.”
Beyond the county board’s overall directive that the recommended budget should include no tax increase, Holder stressed that no departments were ordered to specifically slash their budgets going in.
“No one has told the departments they have to do that,” she noted. “We were told by the board (at February’s planning session) they would not accept a tax increase. Each of them were asked to hold the line. We were asking that each have budgets that total the same or less than last year. Not all of them have done that.”
Holder said she knows some costs have increased, such as utilities and fluctuating fuel costs, and whatever other specific needs arise, and that is the goal of the individual meetings.
“We reviewed the budgets prior to the meetings,” said Holder, who added there are still a few departments out of the 21, including the Sheriff’s Office, still to go. After those departmental meetings with head county staff are completed, the pieces for the overall recommended budget will be put in place. “The budget will be reviewed and pared down as seen fit before we go into the first meeting in June.”
She said everything is being done to accommodate the necessities and hold the line. The individual budget meetings have set out to break down expenditures department-by-department, as the economy has dipped and revenue streams dry up slightly.
“We are doing what we can,” said Holder. “If the department we’re looking at is asking for more than they had last year, we’re seeing what we can do within that budget to bring it back in line. There’s been a 7 percent decrease in vehicle tax (collected) and that equates to a lower tax base. We know we’re going to have a decrease in sales tax (revenue). We’ll have to budget less.”
The county is also looking at what the state does, and how those actions could affect local government and trickle down to Sampson County.
“We are watching the state does very closely,” Holder remarked. “We’re keeping a very wary eye on that.”
As sales tax and vehicle revenues remain unsteady, the county continues to look for other sources to loosen up the budget — as it always has, Holder said.
“We’re very strongly looking at generating additional revenue sources,” she said. “That is always a long-term goal, ‘Is there something we could do to increase revenue?’ While specific budget numbers are not yet known, one thing is fairly certain — whether revenues increase or not this year, taxes will not.
“Our directive from the board is we’re not going to increase taxes,” Holder said simply, “and we’re going to be very mindful of that.”
Chris Berendt can be reached at 910-592-8137, ext. 121, or by email at sicrime@heartlandpublications.com.
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