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10/20/20. 08) Catherine Hostetler - TO:�oAlf Department Heads 8 Elected Officials Page 1 ...:.... _.: From: Mark Dobson To: Patty Godsey Date: 10/16/2008 4:27 PM Subject: TO: All Department Heads & Elected Officials TO: All Department Heads & Elected Officials FROM:, County Commissioners, County Council, & Auditor's Office RE: 2009 Budget Follow-up We wanted to give you another update as to where the budget process is that gives a more definitive explanation than what is being reported in the media. We appreciate the time spent Monday discussing the 2009 budget. We also advised that we would need to schedule a series of meetings over the next 3 - 4 days to finalize the departmental budgets. However, we realize that doing so at this point is premature. HEA1001 has created some real challenges/opportunities for us all. The significant change in this legislation is that the property tax pool for each governing body Is inter -related. And, each entity's ability to raise revenue through the property tax levy is capped by the community's rate of growth. One of the Intentions of the legislation was to foster greater cooperation among the various governmental bodies. Unfortunately the opposite is actually true. Governmental entities are each looking at ways that they can protect their portion of the property tax levy - not only in St. Joseph County - but statewide. So, budgets are being submitted for approval at the maximum advertised rates. Thus, we have come to the conclusion that our budget must also be passed to protect our portion of the overall SIC levy. If we were to cut further, other governmental entities would receive a greater portion of our levy. So, the County Council will be enacting a Levy Protection Budget at their November 12th Council meeting. This 64 million dollar budget is reflective of the hard work you put in to try and reduce your department's expenses. It is also a balanced budget based on use of all available revenue sources. Are we done? NOI We have significant work to accomplish together. We hope that the State will certify our 2009 budget In the first quarter of next year. In the meantime we will be continuing the budgeting process. Over the next two months we will schedule inter -departmental meetings to further analyze the 2009 budget. We still believe that additional cuts will be necessary in our 2009 budget. However, it is difficult to know at what level those will be when we do not even have a 2008 certified budget. We also will be establishing the task force to look at the overall picture as indicated at the department head meeting. While we believe that our budget may be balanced for 2009, we know that 2010 will create a whole new series of challenges as the Circuit Breaker limits are decreased. It has also become apparent that our budget process has become dynamic. Historically, we had fixed Income figures that we could use to evaluate of financial status one time each year. The revenue numbers used for budgeting did not vary much from the actual revenues. The shift to Income Tax based revenue streams and the constant "shifting sands" of the State Legislature has dramatically impacted the budget process. Thank you for your hard work to date. We appreciate all you have done to lesson the impact of HEA1001 on SIC Government while working hard to deliver service to the Public. At, J.