BENTONVILLE -- Benton County officials still are gathering information for the 2016 budget process, but some justices of the peace already are sounding a note of caution.
The Transportation Committee briefly reviewed capital requests from the Road Department, sheriff's office and jail on Sept. 1. The Road Department's list of requested equipment carries a price tag of about $3.4 million, though trade-ins could reduce that to $3 million. Comptroller Brenda Guenther said vehicles and equipment requested for the sheriff's office and jail have an estimated cost of $823,000.
Budget Work
Barb Ludwig, Benton County’s human resources administrator, is preparing personnel requests for the county’s 2016 budget for a Sept. 24 meeting of the Job Evaluation and Salary Administration Program Committee, which includes the county’s elected officials and Shirley Sandlin, justice of the peace for District 8 and chairman of the county’s Personnel Committee. The JESAP Committee will discuss the requests and rank them on a priority list for the Personnel Committee, which is set to meet at 6 p.m. Sept. 29.
Source: Staff Report
The deadline for departmental budgets to be submitted to Guenther's office was Sept. 11.
"I'd say about 95 percent of it is in," she said.
Barb Ludwig, the county's human resources administrator, estimated the cost of new personnel, wage adjustments and promotions for the 2016 budget at $900,000. She also will present information on increasing employees' pay after they have worked for the county for a certain number of years. The longevity pay proposal carries first-year costs of about $128,000, then annual costs of about $60,000, Ludwig said, adding that personnel requests are larger this year than in recent years.
"This reminds me of the ways things were in 2006 or 2007 when things were growing so fast and we were trying to keep up," she said.
Tom Allen of Bentonville, the justice of the peace for the county's District 4, is chairman of the Finance Committee, which also serves as the Budget Committee. He said he's already concerned about the 2016 budget.
"I'm aware of the requests," he said. "It got my attention when I saw all that coming out of Transportation."
Allen said he thinks the county will need to limit spending its reserve while a courts building plan is pending. Engineers are also studying War Eagle Bridge to develop a proposal for repairing and preserving it, and architects are developing plans for an expansion of the jail.
Allen said he expects that those concerns will keep the 2016 budget lower than the number of capital requests might indicate.
"I'm looking at doing some cutting," he said. "We're about to embark on a large capital project in the courts building, and I don't think the county should try to raise taxes to pay for the whole thing. We're going to have to take some money out of our reserves for that. We're going to have a lot of serious discussion."
Barry Moehring of Bentonville, the justice of the peace for the county's District 15, said pay for employees should take precedence over new personnel requests.
"I think we have to take a very close look at the county's personnel requests as a priority," he said. "Obviously, the people we have on board are critical in providing the services we do today. I would think we'd want to put in a benchmark for the personnel needs as a top priority and then work from there."
Moehring also said he expects the Budget Committee to do some cutting, with capital equipment requests most likely to be reduced. The county's revenue projections, which Guenther said she will prepare in the first half of October, also will play a part in budget decisions, he said.
"We're not going to be able to do everything," Moehring said. "It's going to be challenging. I'll be really interested to see what the revenue projections come in as. But even if they come in above what we projected, it doesn't mean we have to spend it all."
Metro on 09/21/2015