Updated: Letter to the editor

Posted by
Admin
in Opinions
Wednesday, August 14. 2019
Updated: 6 days ago
Comment (1)
Dear editor,
When the proposal was made recently to raise the property millage rate, it was pointed out to me that several on social media attributed this proposed raise to an “inherited mess”. This is a completely false assumption. The financial condition of the county has improved every year for the past several years. At the end of 2018, the county was arguably in the best financial condition ever and for the first time that anyone could remember, the county did not need to borrow any operating funds.
According to a recent article in The Dodge County News, the (Dodge County) Board of Commissioners are considering an increase in property tax. This is because of a projected fund deficit due to an increase in operating expenses for 2020.
Bobby Peacock
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#1 Milton I Johnson on 08/14/19 at 03:58 PM [Reply]
Mr. Bobby was the Interim County Manager that Dodge County needed to transition. I don't think anyone else may have been as disciplined with prioritizing service delivery in order to consistently get the County in the black or not far from it. But Dodge County grew to need someone that was a little less risk adverse to help present to the Commission more of the positive risk that could translate into opportunities and strengths for the county.

The state statute requires that local governments shall adopt and operate under an annual balanced budget. For the layman that is a budget where how much the county expects to spend in the fiscal year is equal to the dollar to what it expects to earn. Dodge County had gotten pretty lean over the last couple of years to reach a position where it no longer had to routinely rely on Tax Anticipated Note loans to stabilize the county's cash inflows and outflows until the annual tax payments came in. Also, the county stayed lean enough to attempt to absorb any budget overages that the county constitutional officers might add. While being able to step away from TANs as a crutch is a very positive sign of a maturely ran local government. It doesn't speak fully to the financial health of the county. Sure if you practice cutback management long enough until you are in the black you can get the budget to balance without having to dip into a millage increase to bring in more property tax revenue. But that doesn't mean that the quality of the county's services are where they should be. Cost, Performance, and Time form a constraint triangle. As you make changes to one corner you affect the others. If you are looking to improve say the quality level and performance of a county service. Well then cost is going to be affected. If it requires that you restrain the performance of a service to keep quality at a level that keeps you in the black. That's not a great long term position to be in.

Just reading Mr. Bobby's response captures what I have said. "This is because of a projected fund deficit due to an increase in operating expenses for 2020." It is just not an increase in operating expenses for 2020. It is also an increase in Dodge County quality and performance that residents are demanding.
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