The bad news is that with the current state of the economy, Ada County revenues are down by millions of dollars. Revenue sharing dollars from the State of Idaho are not what they were projected to be. The Ada County budget must necessarily be cut by another $3 million this fiscal year, and proposed budgets for next year must be decreased by another $6 million.
The good news is that this situation provides an opportunity to cut wasteful or unnecessary spending. We will truly have to get back to the basics in order to make cuts this deep in the budget. We are asking for help from department heads and the other six elected officials. It’s a difficult challenge, but one I am sure we can get through.
Although the County has not adopted zero-based budgeting, we are now finding ourselves examining budgets on a line-item by line-item basis, in order to identify and eliminate unnecessary spending. For taxpayers, it’s not all bad news. It is my hope that even after the economy recovers, we will still run a leaner, more efficient Ada County government.