BOCC Briefings - June 14

Here's a quick run down on what I heard and understood today. I was only there for the first hour. All three commissioners attended. As usual there was no media coverage.

1. Financial Services (Theresia Ehrich) briefed the May budget execution. She assured the commissioners that the county is on track as it stands with what is budgeted. But there are no extra funds though and there's nothing to fund bargaining unit contract settlements or any unplanned expenditures.

One very interesting highlight is that the county had more expenditures than revenues 2006 through 2008. Here's how it tracks 2006 this BOCC spent $901K more than they brought in for revenue. 2007 they spent $582K over what came in to the county in revenue. 2008 they had a whopping $1,295K of expenditures greater than our revenues. Mason County, I think we are getting closer to determining what happened to that ending fund balance or cash reserve. In 2009 the BOCC turned around the trend of spending more than realized for revenue. Last year, 2009, we actually had a surplus of $434K.

2. The commissioners will meet Jun 21 at 830 am to discuss 2011 budget strategies. The Auditor's office needs this prior to asking the departments and elected officials to submit their budget estimates. There was quite a list that Ross went through today stating whether he was in favor of or not. He spoke very softly so I really couldn't hear what he was saying. Only the commissioners and Diane Zoren had the list that Ross was reading from. Lynda said she needs to discuss with the other members before she decides what her stand will be on the issues Ross was reading off that I couldn't understand.

3. Open forum for citizens was brought up by Ross. He said that Terra Dittmer and Laura Lewis had been really good about not speaking up - they just sit and listen. But others like Annette McGee has been very outspoken at the open forum. And now that this blogger (Brenda Hirschi for County Commissioner District 3) has entered the race, things are going to get bad during the open forum. He said he wanted the other commissioners to consider moving the open forum to the end of the meeting. I must assume this would be done in hopes that people would leave rather than staying to speak. So much for listening to the people. Discourage them and then they'll go away. Oh, those pesky citizens.

Hats off to Lynda for stating that just because someone files for office, that doesn't mean he or she gives up their First Amendment rights. She said the BOCC is the county's business meeting and it must hold a certain decorum. She suggested they speak with Gary Burleson (outgoing prosecutor) about a policy statement about providing guidance to the Board on what can or cannot be done.

Tim then said the BOCC cannot restrict people from speaking at the meetings. He thinks that any time someone says, "I'm confused" or "I'm a simple citizen" that is coming close to being a campaign issue. He had a bit of advice for all of the candidates (Terra was in the audience) and that was don't attend their meetings rather go out and knock on doors of the voters. Tim went further to say that some commissions actually allow comments by the public at the beginning and end of the meeting. There's an idea worth looking into.

4. The Sheriff told the commissioners that he needs an additional $70K to fund the Jail and Detention bargaining unit settlement. The Sheriff's budget will be able to absorb $25K of the $95K additional cost not planned in 2009.