Board may need reserve funds to balance PW budget
By Tara Donaldson
It appears as though the Prince William Board of County Supervisors will have to dip into the county's reserve funds in order to make ends meet in the coming year.
On Tuesday, the supervisors heard about a revised budget proposal based on revenue that is down by $18.7 million. About $8.1 million of that will affect the county government budget; the rest will hit the school system.
This year's $8.1 million hole is expected to grow each year, hitting $12.3 million by 2013, but for now, officials are just focused on fixing this coming year's shortfall.
Part of the problem is that Prince William will lose about $1.1 million in state funding.
The police department is hardest hit, losing $430,000, and the county's at-risk youth program will lose $183,000.
Social Services, the Sheriff's Office, commonwealth attorney's office and Circuit Court clerk's office are also hit by the state cutbacks.
The board has the option to cover the lost state funding with local money, but generally, if a program loses its funding, the supervisors don't replace it.
“That's been our policy, not to replace lost federal and state revenue,” said Budget Director Dave Tyrar.
In addition, the loss of Northern Virginia Transportation Authority revenue means the county will have to remove plans for improvements to Route 28 from Vint Hill to Fitzwater Drive, the Prince William Parkway, University Boulevard and U.S. 1.
It is unclear yet what, if any, action the General Assembly will take to fund transportation in the region and County Executive Craig Gerhart said he will wait to find out what comes from a special General Assembly session in Richmond before making plans for specific projects.
“Depending what happens there, we may have a bigger problem or a smaller problem but it will most certainly be a different problem,” he said.
The county is also expecting higher-than-anticipated costs for illegal immigration enforcement.
Officials had planned to pay for holding 48 illegal immigrants each year, but they now expect 80 in the coming year, leaving a budget hole of more than $520,000.
The number of detainees is expected to drop off each year, however, falling back to 48 in 2013.
The problem of higher expenses and lower revenue is pretty common across the county government, and after everything has been balanced and cut, the county is still looking at a $5.3-million hole.
To plug it, Tyrar has suggested the board take $500,000 from capital reserves to pay to upgrade the 800 Mhz communication system used by emergency crews.
The rest — about $4.8 million — is money that had been put aside for the revenue stabilization reserve, one of the county's rainy-day funds.
Instead of the almost $5 million contribution to that fund that they had planned, they'll instead put in less than $100,000 for the coming year.
The money already in that fund will likely be used to balance budgets in the coming years, Gerhart said.
“We think this is going to get worse before it gets better,” he added.
All of those plans are based on a real estate tax rate of $1 per $100 of assessed value. If supervisors want to fund programs that have been stripped, they'll have to make cuts in other places.
And while the tax rate can't be any higher than $1, supervisors could still decide to set it lower.
“If you want the tax rate to be lower than $1, you're going to have to cut some stuff,” Gerhart said.