Mineral County budget faces obstacles
With the ever-diminishing nature of Secure Rural and PILT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) funding received every year by Mineral County comes a unique challenge for the county commission – keeping the already stretched county departments running.
In spite of the unknown quantities of SRS and PILT funds the county will receive this upcoming fiscal year, there are still mandatory state timelines for filing budgets and the Office of the Clerk and Recorder as well as the county commissioners have been working with the information they have to meet those deadlines.
“We’ve been trying to make cuts for every department here and there so that this continual downward spiral of lost revenue doesn’t result in having to terminate employees,” County Commissioner Roman Zylawy said. “The problem is we have 55 or 60 county employees so unlike Sanders or Missoula counties, who when they need to make a cut they lay someone off and it’s a big savings to them, we run a shoestring outfit here.”
Mineral County’s budget process began on July 2 with Mineral County Clerk and Recorder Staci Hayes giving out forms to each county department that show expenditures from the previous fiscal year. According to Hayes, this enables the various departments to verify the figures and gives the county the most accurate number possible on expenditures.
The forms are then given back to Hayes approximately two weeks later, which begins the process of the county commissioners reviewing and tweaking the budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.
Commissioner Zylawy used the county road department as an example of the challenges faced by the commission in cutting budgets.
“If we were to take one guy off the road department more people would be calling in because they are snowed in and we have school bus routes that we have to take care of by 7:30 in the morning so kids get to school safe – we can’t cut the road guys,” Commissioner Zylawy said.
The theme is a common one throughout county departments and since the commission cannot make cuts similar to larger counties it must make other decisions to keep the county going. For this fiscal year the choice was made to freeze the salaries of county employees.
“It doesn’t seem fair when people have to put food on the table, but you can’t get blood out of a turnip,” Commissioner Zylawy said. “Maybe we will be able to do something when Congress decides to let forested counties have a regular income. Right now we are at the mercy of them – it’s either we make money off of the trees like we used to or we continue to take what I call their welfare check.”
This year’s “welfare check” from the government could be dramatically less than in previous years with the unknown future of the SRS funding.
Another challenge faced throughout the budget process is how mill funds will be distributed amongst various departments.
Entities such as airport, health and sanitation, extension, MCSO, senior citizens and library receive mill funds from the county each fiscal year. This year MCSO will receive 46 of those mills and other county entities will receive the remaining 43.
“We have allowable mills that the state gives us that we can shell around and we ended up borrowing from other county entities and giving a couple more to the Sheriff’s Office because that budget is the largest one in the county that seems to always need more,” Commissioner Zylawy said.