Minutes 06-09-2022 Budget Work Session

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11 services they provide are either filling the gap or augmenting what the county does. She said they help to provide jobs and services that the county is unable to provide. Commissioner Fowler said she values what outside agencies offer. She said that funding them at a much larger budget this year due to the increase in the sales tax revenues. She said that a 6% decrease would still mean funding at 1.27%. She said that would still be above the 1.2% usual goal. Commissioner Richards said the emphasis on the outside agency funding this year reviewed the work and questioned if the agency supported, augmented, and were aligned with what the departments needed. She said that if they take away from that, are they ultimately taking away funds that will needs to spent to fill the gap. Chair Price said in some cases they are filling gaps, so the gaps would just remain. Commissioner Hamilton said the process is not new, just that the Board sets the dollar amount and the Manager makes the individual allocation. Commissioner Fowler said it would still be more money than they got last year. Commissioner Richards said there are a couple of new ones that are getting funding this year. She asked if those would drop off completely. Chair Price said no they would get 6%-7% less overall. Commissioner Richards asked if they would just reduce all of the allocations by that percentage. Bonnie Hammersley said that is how she would recommend it because if they did a dollar amount then some funding would be wiped out. She said that department heads will meet with the outside agencies to discuss what they can do with the reduced amount. Commissioner Hamilton said that the way that would make it the fairest would be fine. Commissioner McKee said he had a difficult conversation with a representative of an outside agency that felt the funding was insufficient. He said that they wanted him to insert additional money through an amendment and he told the person no, because there was a process. He said that he has gone through meetings where there was horse trading in funding some projects and reducing somewhere else. He said that cutting $100,000 will have an effect. Commissioner Greene said this is not the way to do it. She said that it is not fair at this point to go back to the agencies and tell them that they are getting a reduced amount. She said that would not breed trust. She said the outside agencies need every penny. Chair Price said it is a good thing to have outside agencies to do the work that government cannot do. She said that they took a hit during the pandemic, and it is important to help them get back on their feet. She said that some cases they encourage the agencies to provide living wages to their employees. Commissioner Bedford, Commissioner Hamilton, and Commissioner Fowler were in favor of amendment 22-23OP-007 which would increase school funding by $100,000 and reduce Outside Agency funding by $100,000. Chair Price, Commissioner Greene, Commissioner McKee, and Commissioner Richards were opposed. Commissioner Hamilton said she was inclined to change the next budget amendment, 22-23OP-008, to increase funding. Travis Myren said that is the technical way they are showing the available ARPA balance and to place it in the current expense budget. Commissioner Hamilton said the schools need more money. Chair Price asked if the $350,000 comes from the $4.1 million in ARPA funds. Travis Myren said the $4.1 million is assuming that all of the ARPA amendments are adopted. He said that currently there is $4.8 million in unexpended ARPA funds. Commissioner Hamilton said she would instead like to take $1.2 million from unallocated ARPA funds to give to the schools. Commissioner Greene asked how much ARPA money would be left.