County parks prepares for budget cuts

Whitman County parks department faces steep cuts in the looming 2010 budget overhaul facing Whitman County. Loss of part-time seasonal employee hours, no over-time for regular employees, and steep cutbacks on equipment repairs and office supplies are all factored into the budget which parks director Tim Myers has proposed to county commissioners.

Myers told the park board at a Dec. 10 meeting this budget was only sustainable in the short-term, short of laying off employees.

County commissioners have each put forth a proposal for the park department budget. The final county’s overall 2010 budget will be set Dec. 28. A second public hearing on the county’s budget is scheduled for next Monday, Dec. 21, at 10:30 a.m.

“Because parks isn’t state-mandated, we’ve got to look at it in a little different light,” County Commissioner Greg Partch told the Gazette Tuesday.

The following cuts were proposed to a budget originally penned at $323,230. Myers’ revised budget is for $307,335, taking about a $16,000 cut from his previous 2010 budget proposal.

Over $100,000 of the park budget revenue comes from state grants, not county dollars.

Partch proposed $16,161 in cuts. He had earlier suggested two park rangers go on furloughs over the winter. This would save about $43,000, but Partch said his efforts to find an employer for the rangers during the winter didn’t work out. He also added he was doing as much as possible to avoid layoffs of any of the county’s 200-some employees.

Commissioner Michael Largent said Myers’ proposed budget looked acheivable.

“It’s in the reasonable range,” he said.

Of the three commissioners’ proposals, Largent had the highest proposed cuts at $21,895.

Commissioner Pat O’Neill had the middle-of-the-road budget, with $16,895 in proposed cuts. In an earlier budget proposal, commissioner O’Neill pitched a roughly 15 percent reduction of $48,484.

When Myers saw O’Neill’s comments in a story in the Dec. 3 Gazette saying the parks department isn’t state-mandated (therefore easier to cut funding), he took O’Neill on a tour of Kamiak Butte.

O’Neill could not be reached by press-time, but Partch said he believes O’Neill dropped his proposed cuts from $48,484 to $16,895 after he saw the parks first-hand.

Myers stressed to park board members that his cuts to the budget are really only sustainable in the short-term.

“I believe we can survive for a year or a couple years,” he said, saying this would be done by delaying maintenance costs and equipment purchases.