County faces 'gap' on funding, needs

Growing sales tax revenues are not enough to close the gap between funding requests and available dollars for Salt Lake County's 2006 budget.

Roughly $609 million in anticipated expenditures exceed the $506 million in county coffers. That $103 million difference, however, could be diluted by eating into the county's nearly $172 million in fund balances.

"It's just the sheer magnitude of requests," budget director Lance Brown told the council this week, adding that the county's budget faces a "structural imbalance."

Mayor Peter Corroon and Republican council members have said they are reluctant to dip too far into county reserves, but Corroon said the shortfall has to be made up somehow. Corroon will present his 2006 budget proposal Nov. 1.

Much of the gap, Corroon added, is inherited from the previous administration, which he said left his administration with a $74 million shortfall.

A projected 30 percent increase in natural gas prices for the county and a 15 percent surge in health-care costs have contributed to the budget pinch, Corroon said.

Other major issues that need a hard look from the mayor's office include a $5 million request from the sheriff's office to reopen Oxbow jail and a $3.5 million request from the clerk's office to meet federal election requirements.

"It's going to be hard. With the election requirements, with the increased utility costs, just with the general growth of the population — it's going to be hard," Corroon said.

Councilman Randy Horiuchi questioned whether the county should crack down on departments that consistently come in under budget each year and stockpile those leftover funds. The county generally comes in about 4 percent under budget, Brown said.

With a tight budget ahead, Horiuchi said county leaders could consider cutting back division budgets instead of consistently allowing them to come in under budget. The county could then "harvest some of those underexpends" and apply them toward divisions with new costs.

"If we continue to allow that, we are artificially billowing up our reserves," Horiuchi said. "I'm not saying we ought to slash their budgets, but we should apply a realistic number."

---

E-mail: estewart@desnews.com