Budget proposal aims to fill $12.5 million gap
Picnics would get pricier. Plea bargains would be easier for crooks to land. And for the first time in a decade, tax rates on real property would go up.
Plenty of other things would get a little worse, too.
Those three items — fee hikes at county parks, layoffs at the county prosecutor’s office and an “emergency” property tax rate hike of one percentage point, despite deflating prices across the economy — would save Clark County about $2 million next year.
They’re a slice of $12.5 million in cost cuts and revenue hikes proposed by county commissioners Friday.
The cuts will keep coming next year, commissioners predicted, as general fund revenue continues to shrink just as fast as it did in 2009.
“We are planning for a long recession,” Commissioner Marc Boldt said Friday morning. “Home growth, I think, isn’t going to come back to where it was.”
Commissioners’ proposals, which are not final, include:
n$3.3 million from the sheriff’s office, enough to close 13 percent of the county’s jail beds and take 11 percent of its deputies off the streets.
n$1.6 million in service cuts and fee hikes at county parks, including new park-shelter reservation fees of $25 to $100, removing lifeguards from Klineline Pond, closing the nearby “sprayground,” hiking parking fees from $2 to $3 and closing regional parks to all auto traffic from December to February.
n$966,000 from property taxpayers, due to a clause in state law that Budget Director Jim Dickman said allows the county to raise property tax rates by up to one percentage point in an “emergency.” Without the action, a voter-approved tax cap would have forced the county to reduce tax rates by a fraction of one percentage point, as is being planned by agencies such as the Fort Vancouver Library District.
n$690,112 from the county prosecutor’s office, including four attorneys, two support positions and a round of furloughs. Office administrator Shari Jensen said such cuts would drive up caseloads and increase plea bargaining.
Those cuts might get less drastic if some of the county’s 11 labor bargaining units, eight of which are now negotiating with the county, agree to wage freezes or benefit cuts next year.
Voters oppose taxes
Washington voters may have rejected the tax-cutting Initiative 1033 this month, Boldt said, but 54 percent of Clark County’s residents backed it.
“Voters and constituents are very conservative in this county, and we as elected officials have to acknowledge that,” Boldt said. “We have to do as they say.”
Commissioner Steve Stuart said commissioners didn’t consider asking voters to approve a property tax hike to maintain some services.
“People are hurting enough,” he said.
Still, commissioners said they’re worried about the impact of looming cuts to state government, which might close Larch Corrections Center and greatly cut state treatment for people with severe mental illness.
“If those people aren’t getting help, they’re going to the jails,” Stuart said. “It will mean more people at the county doors asking for help.”
County officials repeatedly predicted Friday that harder choices are on the way.
In a memo explaining Friday’s proposal, the county’s budget office said it expects “future budgets that promise austerity for years.”
Commissioner Marc Boldt said it’s the result of a “tax structure” that caps property tax growth, pushing the county to rely more heavily on sales taxes and new construction.
One thing local residents can do to help preserve local services, Boldt said, is to shop locally.
Clark County, he said, collects less sales tax per capita than any other large county.
“Sales tax equals deputies,” Boldt said. “If you’re going to buy a gift for your mom or dad or sister or brother or baby, do it in Vancouver.”
Michael Andersen: 360-735-4508 or michael.andersen@columbian.com.
