Lane County budget officials weighed fiscal prudence against social responsibility Thursday night when approving the county’s budget – public safety won.
The county’s budget committee voted to dip into a reserve pool to fund a number of programs they felt were too important to the public to cut, throwing caution to the wind about the future implications of using the reserve money.
“The reason you have reserves is if you have a major problem you have the answer,” County Commissioner Peter Sorenson said. “These are programs that literally mean life and death in our community.”
The committee pulled more than $1.6 million from the Service Stabilization Reserve to fund nine programs. The move will restore 24-hour sheriff patrol, the women, infant and children program, and keep the county’s animal shelter open.
“This means that when people call 911 for help somebody will come to help them,” Sheriff Russ Burger said.
County officials said they realized the importance of these programs when they voted unanimously to use the reserve money.
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to deter human suffering in our community,” County Commissioner Bill Dwyer said. “How do you put a price on someone who’s neglected?”
The county has two reserve funds: The stabilization reserve and another reserve that the county is mandated to keep at 10 percent of the budget. The two reserves combined hold about $20 million and are meant to pay unforeseen county bills or help stabilize future budgets.
By taking money from the reserve, the county will be forced to cut somewhere between 28 and 33 jobs in the 2010-11 fiscal year. However, budget officials said making sure the public is safe now is more important than worrying about future budgets.
“We have to be flexible and bend like a tree in the wind. If we didn’t bend tonight then our little social tree would have broke,” Commissioner Bill Fleenor said.
An estimated 97 positions are still going to be cut, however, along with dozens of programs. Budget officials scraped together money from local cities and other areas, but could find no alternative that adequately made up for the loss of $47 million in federal funding.
A forest work camp will still be closed, the county jail will only have 93 beds out of 504 available for local offenders and criminal prosecution will be severely impacted.
“This has been an incredibly difficult process where we have a number of essential and valued services that we’d like to purchase for our community, and not enough money available to fund them all,” Commissioner Faye Stewart said. “Even with some restorations, many programs will no longer provide services to the community and others will continue below current services levels.”
[email protected]