RELATED: Butler County presents $102 million general fund spending plan for 2019
Finance Director Tawana Keels presented the budget to the commissioners last Monday, and it included about $2.4 million in cuts from the original $104 million in requests. The largest was the $2 million the commissioners have been socking away annually in a rainy day fund.
Commissioner Don Dixon said he didn’t want to “rain on anybody’s parade” but he wants that money reinstated because they can’t know what the future brings, and he doesn’t want the county to return to a darker financial status. .
“In today’s terms we’re in good shape, but this can change overnight,” he said. “We need to somehow come up with a way to get that funding stream back in place … . I don’t want to go through that again where we had to lay off hundreds.”
He told the Journal-News later he understands it is likely too late to find other areas to cut before they need to pass the budget, but he wants staff to find ways throughout next year to restore the $2 million.
“One of the things that we’ll direct the finance department to do is they’re going to have to tighten up in certain places and save as much as they can, to try to get that money back,” Dixon said. “We’ve got 12 months to do it, so I think we can do it.”
Keels said the rainy day fund was the “logical” place to cut for next year given the 20.3 percent health insurance hike.
“I’m suggesting that for this year, because of the increase in health insurance costs, it seemed like a logical place to reduce the budgets,” she said. “If not the budget stabilization reserve, I would not want to go and in effect cut department budgets that might effect operations or services to the residents.”
There is currently $8 million in the rainy day fund and Dixon said he would feel more comfortable with $12 to $15 million. The total reserve balance — that once stood at only around $10 million in 2020 — is about $50 million, not including the rainy day fund.
Commissioner T.C. Rogers said he is comfortable with the amount in the stabilization fund now, especially given the total fund reserve.
“I think that we had reached a level that I believe is adequate,” he told the Journal-News. “But we can always add to it in subsequent years… That’s almost an emergency thing where it’s unencumbered and we can get to it quickly.”
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