Grant County budget unchanged for 2010

EPHRATA — The majority of departments in Grant County have the same amount of money for 2010 as they had for 2009.

The Grant County commissioners passed the 2010 budget, with the majority of a $3 million increase in the county’s current expense fund going to replenish the county’s reserves. The $34 million current expense fund pays for several of the county’s departments including the prosecutor’s, sheriff’s, treasurer’s, auditor’s and assessor’s offices as well as the courts.

Grant County Treasurer Darryl Pheasant said the majority of the increase comes from more property taxes from REC Silicon for new construction at the Moses Lake plant.

“We were lucky we have REC,” he said. “We are lucky we have a large industry that wanted to invest a billion dollars plus in the area. We are able to survive to stay at status quo.”

The county’s reserves dipped to about $700,000 this year, after being at about $2.3 million last year. Pheasant called this level dangerously low.

“We were in the negative in cash many times in the year … This revenue increase isn’t going to solve all of that. We’re going to have cash flow problems,” he said. “We’re still going to be hurting for another six months.”

Commissioner Cindy Carter said the 2010 budget shouldn’t dip into reserves.

The county is seeing changes in how banks handle public money. A new requirement, forcing banks to cover 100 percent of public money put into them went into place, more banks are  turning away agencies wanting to buy fiscal CDs. The change forces agencies to invest in the state pool, which has a much lower interest rate.

The county’s hiring freeze remains in place and there are no plans to fill several empty positions, including the prosecutor’s office investigator, two spots in the treasurer’s office and one spot in the auditor’s office. 

“We did have some employees that we got rid of around the end of 2009. There was one position or two positions on the community development departments. We did have a lay off at the fairgrounds … We laid off our sales and marketing individual, that was Bill West. We already have our events scheduled for next year,” Carter said.

Not all departments are seeing their budgets stay the same. There are increases in both the sheriff’s office and the assessor’s office. The sheriff’s office’s budget increased by roughly $700,000 this year.

The increase is slated for a 2 percent pay increase for the deputies and increases in health insurance costs, Undersheriff John Turley said. The money went to things the administrators don’t have any control over.

The office lost four officers in the jail, but gained officers through grant funding during this past year. He pointed out the office has received about $1.1 million in grant funding in 2009.

Turley said he would give up his raise to add another detective to the office.

“When you stop and think, we had two cases that could have gone to the death penalty this year,” he said. “We’ve had six homicides in the county … We have other things that are going on. We have child protective services. We have sexual assault crimes … We have a number of things that have just overwhelmed our detectives.”

The assessor’s office received $500,000 more this year than last year. The increase is meant to pay for the software to switch to assessing properties annually, Carter said. The change allows the assessor’s office to follow economic trends in property values closer.

The change won’t increase the amount of employees in the office, Carter said.