The long anticipated May 20 deadline has finally arrived for the Charles County Commissioners in their quest to balance the Fiscal Year 2015 budget, a financial structure which as of last Tuesday still faced a serious deficit. Finance Director David Eicholtz and Jeni Ellin, chief of Budget, Department of Fiscal & Administrative Services and their staff have turned over every rock in an effort to find some semblance of resolution.
On the Capital Improvements Project side of the fence, Eicholtz and Ellin presented to the commissioners 203 CIP projects in the current budget, some of which are languishing in the system for various reasons, in an effort to find areas where money could be found. The commissioners, Capital Services Chief John H. Stevens and Resource and Infrastructure Management Chief Jason Groth waded through the list in a three-hour marathon session May 13.
Eicholtz said that just because projects were in the five year plan doesn’t mean that it’s cast in stone for the next four years. Some projects have changed in scope since their inception, projects such as Mill Hill Road, its original intent to connect to the Cross County Connector. Since that project was put on hold, the extension for Mill Hill Road to connect with that ill-fated throughway has dissipated as well.
Stevens told the commissioners, “If we won’t tie in to that other road, if the Cross County Connector is not moving forward, there is no reason for this extension. So we established that if we’re not going to link up to the Cross County Connector, let’s just widen the road to make it safe. We are reevaluating the project and that is currently under design.”
Commissioner President Candice Quinn Kelly asked if that would reduce the cost.
Stevens replied, “In a previous study we did reduce that from $1.5 million of what is needed.
Commissioner Ken Robinson asked Ellin, “if we were to take any of these projects and remove them, would that reduce our gap by a million?”
“Yes,” Ellin replied.
The process was akin to slogging through mud, but at the end of the day, after long deliberations, it appeared that progress was being made, at least in the CIP. The final determination of how much progress will become apparent when the commissioners hold their public hearing May 20 to set the tax rate and final decisions are made on which specific projects will be axed or kept.
The General Fund, Eicholtz explained, is a totally different critter.
“We’re still facing a $10.2 million deficit,” he said. “That is just the baseline budget, it’s not everybody’s requests. We did go over some budget solutions with the commissioners, but even with those there is a $4.2 million gap we still have to resolve. We met with the Department of Emergency Services to see if they could defer the radio purchases. They feel they could defer the portable purchases, which would lower the cap lease cost by $700,000. Our second proposal was a little more controversial, asking fire and rescue to pay for their share of the mobile radios, If the commissioners want to have fire and rescue do that, it would take another $144,000 out of the deficit.”
Eicholtz said that while the budget could be further
