SNOW HILL — Despite a budget review committee trimming expenditures by millions, the Worcester County FY15 budget is still facing a shortfall of $2.4 million with only a few weeks to go before a final plan is set to be adopted.
For the most part, cuts recommended by the committee were well received, though there was some battling over areas like tourism advertisement spending.
Worcester originally faced a budget shortfall of $8.4 million earlier this month. The county review committee made recommendations to cut $4,556,775 in total from budget expenditures. Some of the biggest areas of change included cutting $372,137 from Matching Appropriation Health Department State Share, $500,000 from Road Maintenance Materials Blacktop for Overlay and $100,000 from Advertising Tourism.
The review team also made dozens of other cut recommendations, sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars, as well as a smaller amount of budget increase suggestions. Besides the expense cuts, the county saw revenue increases of $1,509,605 higher than first anticipated, usually in the form of things like additional grant funding.
In total, as of Tuesday’s budget work session, anticipated revenue for Worcester’s FY15 budget was $177,908,794 against expenditures of $180,214,968. This leaves the county about $2.4 million over budget. It’s worth noting that the figures already include the use of roughly $6.4 million in stabilization funds. While the commission could commit additional stabilization funds, some commissioners have worried that if the fund is over-relied on it will run dry before any kind of economic turnaround can begin to re-build it.
While the reductions recommended by the review committee have brought a balanced budget within striking distance, the chains didn’t advance much during this week’s work session. It ended up being more or less a wash with the few minor reductions off-set by some minor increases.
One of the biggest areas of contention was the tourism budget, which was set to see a cut of $100,000 from $400,000 last year to $300,000. That didn’t sit well with Commissioner Louise Gulyas. Tourism Director Lisa Challenger already produces results with limited resources, Gulyas argued, and tying her hands further is the last thing the county wants to do.
“[Challenger] works with absolutely nothing and produces quality information … Tourism is our number one business here in this county,” Gulyas said. “I make a motion that we increase her funding from $300,000 to $400,000.”
The motion received a mixed reaction. Commission President Bud Church stated that he would like to continue tourism at level funding, meaning keeping it at $400,000 as it was last year. The rest of the commission didn’t dispute Challenger’s abilities but did point out that the clock is ticking on finding a balanced budget and tough cuts are a reality.
“I’m not arguing that [Challenger] wouldn’t use it to benefit the whole county,” said Commissioner Virgil Shockley. “But we’re $2.4 million out right now.”
Commissioner Jim Bunting motioned for a compromise where $60,000 in grant funding would be taken from Furnace Town and Snow Hill and applied to tourism instead, raising the advertising total to $360,000 without actually changing the budget shortfall. Bunting underscored that the commission wouldn’t really be yanking the $20,000 from Furnace Town or $40,000 from Snow Hill as that was funding that the review committee had actually recommended above what the towns had requested. This motion received unanimous, if somewhat begrudging, approval.
The commission will attempt to close the $2.4 million shortfall further next week at a work session scheduled for Wednesday, May 21.