County ponders looming budget gap
Albemarle officials on Wednesday confronted the county’s projected $4.1 million budget deficit, but could only guess how the shortfall in the state budget could worsen Albemarle’s financial crisis.
Though the fiscal year began little more than two months ago, Albemarle is already finding itself collecting less tax revenue for fiscal 2009 than it had anticipated. The county examined revenue figures and estimated a shortfall of 1.8 percent of the total general fund budget for the fiscal year.
County Executive Robert W. Tucker Jr. said the county prepared for an economic downturn when it adopted the budget, but said: “It has certainly gotten worse than we anticipated.”
Officials are projecting that the county will collect 1.7 percent less revenue from real-estate taxes this fiscal year than projected when the budget was adopted in April, according to county spokeswoman Lee Catlin. Projected revenues from personal property tax, vehicle license tax and sales tax are down 8.4 percent, 7.3 percent and 5.3 percent respectively.
The projections mean $2.4 million less for schools, $1.4 million less for local government and $300,000 less for capital projects.
To come up with the projections, Tucker said the county had only two months of data to examine. He said that the projections are “pretty soft” and “the situation could worsen,” depending on the economy. The projected shortfall also doesn’t account for likely cuts in state funding.
Tucker said experts project the state’s budget shortfall will be at least $1 billion. Supervisor Dennis S. Rooker said the county can probably expect about a $500,000 cut in state funding.
Albemarle, Tucker said, is trying to save money by reducing travel spending, capital expenses such as furniture, and overtime hours for employees, for example. The county also is trying to reduce fuel consumption and improve buildings’ energy efficiency.
In addition, the county has frozen or eliminated 32 positions.
“All areas of expenditure are on the table for review, including compensation,” Catlin said in a statement.
Tucker recommended that the county consider using $1.6 million that it has set aside in a “lockbox” in case of financial crisis.
Board Chairman Kenneth C. Boyd said that he’s reluctant to agree to open up the lockbox without first seeing the results of an $89,000 county resource utilization study expected to be complete by mid-January.
The school system’s current budget is $151.3 million, while the county’s totals $334.7 million. School officials said they are trying to make cuts that are as far away from the classroom as possible.
The Board of Supervisors and School Board will have a joint meeting Oct. 1 to discuss the projected shortfall.
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Slutzky, Norris and Company plan to petition the state legislature this Spring for a ‘Regional Transportation Commisson”. If the Commission is apporved, they plan to submit a request for a 1% increase in the sales tax for both Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
With that revenue, they plan to run busses into the northern part of the County…more buses with two passengers on them. Another piece of that revenue pie will be used to pay the guarantee of $700,000.00 per year for the Amtrak train to D.C.
Two passengers on the county busses and probably the same on the train.
They are banking on people making a daily commute between Charlottesville and Washington, D.C. No body in his right mind will commute four hours each way back and forth to work. But some pinhead seems to think this is a worthwhile project.
Slutzky and company need to look around. The economy is not in very good shape.
The easiest way to correct the current situation is to raise taxes…that wouldn’t require much thought. The challange it to find ways to reduce cost. Of course, that would take a little more effort than they plan to put forth.
Here we go folks. Expect them to dip into everyone’s pocketbook again and do what Sludsky does best, raise taxes!
Does anyone ever wonder why Albemarle needs redundent positions? Do they really need two spokespersons or two environmental managers to name a couple?
Could not Tucker have said this, “All areas of expenditure are on the table for review, including compensation,”?
People say taxes are low here. Well for the few services I receive I say they should be. After all we do pay federal, state, meals tax, personal property tax & fees, phone tax on top of real estate.
If they collect it, they will spend it as the real estate boom has shown us.
Well let’s see - the county can save $89,000 if they stop commissioning “county resource utilization studies.“ What does the Board of Supervisors do - not a rhetorical question! Aren’t they supposed to be managers and executives? Aren’t they supposed to have the skills and talents to evaluate county resources without writing a check to some (probably) out of town consultant?
These people have been squandering treasure and abandoning common sense for years. And the incumbents almost never lose elections.
I’m starting to think the electorate is even more stupid than the politicians think we are.
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