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Alcona officials work to shave $600K from budget

HARRISVILLE — The Alcona County Board of Commissioners will conduct a number of special work sessions beginning Monday in an effort to shave down $600,000 in overages for the upcoming 2018 budget.

The special workshops were discussed and set by the board during a Wednesday meeting.

Commissioner Adam Brege, a member of the county finance committee, said right now the county is working on a $5.1 million budget for 2018. He said, however, the budget is nearly $600,000 over projected revenues for the year, meaning officials would have to find areas to cut or alternative sources for the $600,000.

The county is in very similar situation to last year’s budget where expenditures were over revenues.

Last November the board approved a more than $5 million budget.

In order to balance the budget last year the county used $400,000 from its fund equity.

Last year Commissioner Carolyn Brummund, another member of the finance committee, said the county borrowed $300,000 from fund equity for the 2016 budget.

Chairman Craig Johnston said the county’s various department heads will be invited to the meeting to go line by line of the budgets submitted by the departments to see where money could be saved.

“We’re in the exact same situation as Alpena County,” he said.

According to Alpena County officials budget shortfalls have been made up by utilizing the county tax revolving fund. Alcona’s fund is 100 percent funded, said Johnston, meaning that when paying delinquent tax payments to cities and townships in Alcona County they do not have to borrow funding to make the payments.

He said Alcona Treasurer Cheryl Franks may not be willing to dip into the delinquent tax revolving fund to make up the shortfall as Alpena County officials have.

As far as last year’s deficit situation, Johnston said although the county was $400,000 over budget its original was nearly $600,000 and officials shaved that amount down by nearly $200,000.

Johnston said the board has a goal of having a budget ready by early December.

“Right now we’re not looking at any layoffs, office closures, or program cuts, we’re going to see if any operating costs can be cut,” Johnston said.

He added that the county’s operating millage, which was originally passed by voters at 5.25 mills has been rolled back to 4.17 through the Headlee Rollback Amendment, which lowers county millages if the rate of tax increase exceeds the cost of living. Johnston said the county could ask voters for a millage to bridge that gap, as was done in Ogemaw County.

Brege said it is a challenge to reduce the budget for the county.

The hard part about working with a municipal budget, is that unlike manufacturing, you can’t just increase sales or adjust pricing of your product to overcome budget gaps. You can’t sell more government,” he said.

“The finance committee has compiled a spreadsheet that breaks the shortfall down by department based on the percentage of the budget each one has requested. If approved by Johnston, we will send to the department heads. It is not expected that they will find all of the funds, but will give incentive to give the numbers another thorough look to determine if we can save any additional costs before working with the final numbers,” Brege said.

Jason Ogden can be reached via email at jogden@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5693. Follow Jason on Twitter @jo_alpenanews.

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