Grant County makes budget cuts

EPHRATA — Grant County commissioners passed the 2009 budget on Tuesday after three weeks of negotiations and deliberations.

The $117 million budget included cuts to several departments, including roughly $700,000 to the current expense fund, which includes the budgets for the prosecutor’s office, the Grant County Sheriff’s Office and the district court.

About $84 million was split across 49 different funds, including the road fund, Grant Mental Healthcare, economic enhancement funds and bond repayments.

The departments, which receive their money from the current expense fund, proposed about $33 million in their 2009 budgets. The revenue projection for the fund is $31 million.

All of the departments included in the current expense fund had to cut about 3 percent from their 2008 budget.

Commissioners Richard Stevens and Cindy Carter said the county expected to see more revenue this year when they decided on the budget this year. They budgeted using about $1.8 million of their reserves, but didn’t expect to use it.

In previous years, the county didn’t need to dip into the reserves, Carter said.

“(Grant County Treasurer Darryl Pheasant) always projects our revenue low,” Stevens said. “We have always come in above the projection.”

Pheasant said the reserves would probably drop from about $4.1 million at the beginning of 2008 to about $2.3 million at the end of this year. This could pay the county’s expenses for about a month.

“A year ago no one pondered this economic situation,” he said. “The cupboard’s bare. Now all we can do is talk about major cuts.”

While the county didn’t get as much revenue as they were expecting, the costs for the county kept rising. The original requests in the current expense fund were about $2 million higher than the projected revenue.

Cutting into the budgets, lead to layoffs in several departments. Between the sheriff’s office and the jail, there were three people laid off and one position will remain unfilled. The sheriff’s office lost about $100,000 in funding.

Undersheriff John Turley said the sheriff’s office was planning to restart the street crimes unit to place an emphasis on gangs once again, but due to budget cuts, that won’t happen.

The prosecutor’s office lost a secretarial position and will either have to lay off an attorney or not fill a position depending on who replaces Grant County Prosecuting Attorney John Knodell, Chief Deputy Steve Hallstrom said.

Knodell was elected to replace retiring Superior Court Judge Ken Jorgensen this January. Four of the attorney’s vying for his position are deputy prosecutors.

“It’s a challenging time to be working for local government,” he said. “We can only hope the economy picks back up and the people will be replaced.”

If the attorney outside of the office gets appointed, then the office will need to lay off an attorney, rather than leaving the position unfilled. He said either way there will be a decrease in their services.

“I think they will have to make some difficult decisions,” he said. “Frankly, there will be a decrease in everything … It’s very tough, but you do what you have to do.”

The office currently has four attorney’s in district court, one in juvenile court and four in superior court, with Hallstrom splitting his time between county civil issues and criminal matters and Knodell picking up the cases he can.

“Take a look around, it’s people and paperwork,” Knodell said before the budget cut was finalized. “If you have to cut people, then it makes it difficult, Then you have to start asking, ‘What gets prosecuted and what doesn’t?’”

The district court is negotiating with the union to find a way to save two-and-a-half positions, Carter said. They are discussing whether to go without pay raises or taking an extended leave to avoid the layoffs.

Along with those positions, there were several other positions in the county which will remain unfilled including in the juvenile department.

The fairgrounds, which is not part of the current expense budget, lost $100,000 from the budget, decreasing to about $900,000.

Fairgrounds Manager Bill West suggested bringing back three of the six employees, which were laid off at the end of November, during the budget hearings.

Stevens said the commissioners are still discussing the situation.

Carter said the commissioners appreciate the help from the department in balancing the budget.

“It’s unfortunate that we lost some employees,” she said. “We’ve had some sleepless nights putting together the budget.”