Stapleton: Delaware County ‘fortunate,’ despite expected state funding cuts

Loom­ing state fund­ing cuts haven’t damp­ened Den­nis Stapleton’s parade — Delaware County’s future is still look­ing bright, the recently elected county com­mis­sioner told busi­ness lead­ers Thursday.

Toward the end of his speech to Delaware Area Cham­ber of Com­merce mem­bers in which he touted the county’s AAA bond rat­ing, rapid pop­u­la­tion growth and the impor­tance of an upcom­ing 911 levy, Sta­ple­ton recounted a recent con­ver­sa­tion with a county com­mis­sioner from another, more rural county.

That county recently had to sell land just to make payroll.

State fund­ing cuts or not — which will amount to a pro­jected $1.2 mil­lion over the next two years under a bud­get pro­posal made by Gov. John Kasich ear­lier this week — Delaware County is nowhere near that point.

In fact, Delaware County has weath­ered tough eco­nomic times with­out mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant lay­offs or cuts.

Sure, devel­op­ment has slowed down in Delaware County since its peak years in the early part of this cen­tury. But it’s still the 15th-fastest grow­ing county in the United States. And there are still oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth, par­tic­u­larly along Sawmill Park­way and at the planned new Delaware inter­change off Inter­state 71, Sta­ple­ton said.

“We are so for­tu­nate here in Delaware County,” Sta­ple­ton said.

That doesn’t mean the county will be spared the pain of state fund­ing cuts.

Exact details of the Kasich bud­get plan have not yet been released, but Delaware County offi­cials are prepar­ing for some­where around a 25 per­cent reduc­tion in the $2.2 mil­lion in local gov­ern­ment funds it receives annu­ally from the state.

The impact of a cut in state fund­ing — which is only about 3 per­cent of the county’s total rev­enue — is rel­a­tively small. Delaware County takes in about $65 mil­lion a year, about three-fifths of which is sales tax, mostly thanks to Polaris area.

Still, Delaware County Admin­is­tra­tor Tim Hans­ley said as things stand, the reduc­tion in fund­ing will have a def­i­nite long-term impact to county services.

Putting together a 2012 bud­get should be rel­a­tively easy, but 2013 will be a “real prob­lem,” espe­cially con­sid­er­ing an expected increase in gas and health insur­ance costs, he said.

To try to ease the bur­den, the county would likely first cut the grants it makes to com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions, but ser­vices like EMS, emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions and social ser­vices could feel the squeeze. Com­mis­sion­ers also may con­sider reduc­ing the amount of sales taxes cur­rently diverted to county roads and bridges, Hans­ley said.

Even so, “In 2013, we’re going to be look­ing at cuts, and you have to cut where the money is. I’ll be shocked if we can bal­ance it with­out reduc­ing per­son­nel in crit­i­cal areas,” Hans­ley said.

Cur­rent leg­is­la­tion under con­sid­er­a­tion at the State­house may mit­i­gate some of the need for cuts. Remov­ing pre­vail­ing wage require­ments, decreas­ing tax­payer con­tri­bu­tions to gov­ern­ment employee pen­sions and weak­en­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights for pub­lic employ­ees could help reduce the county’s costs, Hans­ley said.

Delaware city fig­ures to have a rougher go at it. Local gov­ern­ment funds com­prise about 10 per­cent of the city’s roughly $10 mil­lion in annual gen­eral fund rev­enues, said city man­ager Tom Homan. The city already stands to lose $350,000 in annual rev­enues with the expected upcom­ing Repub­li­can repeal of the estate tax.

City coun­cil will meet this Mon­day to dis­cuss how the fund­ing cuts will affect city ser­vices, Homan said.

Posted by Andrew Tobias on Mar 17 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.