Highlights from the Harris budget message

"We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision."
Gary Collins Author, Counselor

The following budget has been prepared in accordance with the Board's request for a balanced budget that does not presume either revenue from a ½% county sales tax nor does it provide the significant property tax relief that the sales tax proposal contains. This budget uses the maximum allowed levy under the State imposed levy freeze. The budget requires very substantial cuts in personnel. I believe that many of these cuts are imprudent, however these cuts are unavoidable if a balanced budget is to be achieved without a sales tax. This budget does not in any way represent my recommendation to the Board. To derive my budget recommendation to the Board, one must modify this budget by adding back the
spending, revenue, and property tax relief as shown on the worksheet following this narrative.

Many other departments submitted requests for building improvements, remodeling and repairs. I do not believe many of them are crucial to continuing operations and service delivery. In addition, we simply do not have the financial resources available to do them without deeper cuts in other departments. As such, I have eliminated $477,000 of requests from the 2006 budget.
(Translation - less maintenance now can lead to more costs later)

The County Road Maintenance Department shows a decrease of around $268,000. State transportation aid dollars are declining. The County does not have the funds available to replace the state transportation money so we can't increase road maintenance. As a result, the number of miles we are able to maintain will drop about 2.3 miles to 6 miles per year. This is well below the number of miles we should be maintaining to maximize the life of our roads and minimize future maintenance and reconstruction costs. This will lead to a gradual degradation of the County Road System.
(Translation - less new roads and maintenance, new roads will have to be bonded at even larger costs)

The Land and Water Conservation and Emergency Management departments are both down roughly $270,000 each. Land and Water is anticipating having less grant monies available for property water runoff and land management programs. Emergency Management is anticipating getting fewer grant dollars from the Office of Justice Assistance for anti-terrorism projects.
(Translation - we are reducing flood control and anti-terrorism funds!!!)

http://www.wisinfo.com/northwestern/frontpage/2006execbudget.pdf