Latah County Budget Workshops and More

It’s not often that the Latah County Commissioners meet more than once a week, but they did this week to facilitate further discussions of their budget for next year. We dive into this and more in this week’s report!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. This week proved to be a shorter week for the city and a longer week for the county, as the commissioners made their way through a number of decisions going into the annual budget this year. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first, let’s take a look at the city.

Steve McGeehan, the head of the sustainable environment commission, began the meeting with a report on the commission’s past year of activities, including updates to the city’s water conservation plan, the energy efficiency and electrification fair this past April, and the Earth Day Awards. McGeehan also mentioned the commission’s work on a possible community solar project for the future.

Bill Belknap then presented to the council a Police Department Donation Account Creation Resolution. That’s a lotta words for something relatively simple. Let’s walk through it.

Recently, Moscow city resident Joyce Presby passed away, and as a part of her will donated $25,818.35 to the Moscow Police Department. In order to facilitate accepting this donation, as well as any future donations the police department might receive, city staff requested the creation of a restricted fund balance account, where this money would be held until such time as the police decided to use it. The resolution was approved unanimously by the Moscow City Council.

Lastly, David Schott delivered an update to the council on the subject of the East City Park stage. The city, of course, has had plans to build a new stage for some time now. In this report, Schott went through some new elements of the stage that were not quite as nailed down in previous reports, including new renders of the stage which include spaces for public art, changes to the park pathways relative to the stage itself, including a concrete ring path around the stage, and the timeline for future milestones.

As of this past week, the estimated cost for the stage is $781,000. Construction bids for the stage will open on August 25th, and the council is looking to accept a bid on September 21st, with actual construction expected to begin on October 7th. We’ll have more information on the stage project as we get closer to those dates.

And now for the county.

The commissioners met on Tuesday and Thursday this past week with both the department heads and elected officials in the room to further discuss details related to the county’s annual budget. The budget itself is in the last stages of being finalized before the full plan is released to the public ahead of a hearing.

County Clerk Julie Fry, as the county budget officer, is responsible for assembling a budget and making recommendations to the commissioners, although the commissioners have a final say in all things budget related. How is she making these recommendations this year? Let’s take a look at a quote:

“As Budget Officer, my responsibility is to recommend a balanced budget that maintains essential county services while ensuring the County remains financially sustainable over the long term.

This year’s budget was evaluated differently than in prior years. Rather than comparing only the previous year’s budget to the current year’s requests, I analyzed seven years of operating expenditures by comparing the FY2020 budget to FY2027 department requests for the County’s property tax supported funds. Capital projects and grant-funded activities, including the Broadband Capital Projects Grant, were excluded so the analysis would focus on recurring operating expenditures supported by property tax revenues.

To establish a benchmark, l adjusted the FY2020 operating budget using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to estimate what would be required in FY2027 to maintain the same level of services. The results are summarized below…”

As Julie explained at both meetings, the expense of county operations going into FY2027 was the most out of kilter with her budget goals, coming in at about $546,000 above the Consumer Price Index expectations.

Julie explained that she is uninterested in seeing county reserve funds being used to support operation costs because it is not sustainable in the long-term. Instead, she is looking at each department making reductions to their operation expenses in those categories that have nothing to do with employee salaries or benefits. One such example would be a 20% reduction in the county Travel and Training budgets.

At both meetings this week, the commissioners went through different details of different sections of the budget and discussed Julie’s approach. At the first meeting, a decent portion of the discussion was focused on what to do with the county jail fund, whether to designate a certain portion of capital reserves towards it or not. At the second meeting, the commissioners focused on where to make those reductions in their own budget, what sort of pay structure or increases the commissioners should be taking, and what to do about cellphone reimbursements across the county.

Now, the proposed budget isn’t yet complete, but the commissioners are expecting to wrap up their workshops by Monday, August 10th. As things presently stand, Commissioners Stooks and Johnson seem largely on board with many of the Clerk’s recommendations, while Commissioner Lamar seems more resistant, as he advocated for the money saved through these cuts being used to bolster employee salaries rather than just being saved.

There’s a lot more county budget to go through and more discussions for the commissioners to have. We’ll do our best to keep you posted on all of it. As always, we’ll have the relevant links posted with this video, and if you have any questions, please reach out. I’m Aiden Anderson with the Moscow Minutes. We’ll see you next time!