craigdailypress.com

Courtesy Illustration

With revenue shortfalls looming, Moffat County officials took a different approach to their budget this year to show department directors how decisions made this year could affect the next five.

A graph created by county Budget Analyst Tinneal Gerber shows that if departments were granted all their spending requests this year and in years following, and if the county’s revenues continue to decline along the same level, the county general fund would have a deficit of about $8 million by 2013.

It’s important to note that these projections do not show what the county budget will look like in four years, but are a model of what would happen if the Moffat County Commission did not start looking at spending cuts now.

County officials “used the information to communicate what we’re looking at to our department heads and other elected officials, really to help them and the commissioners understand the truly big picture,” Gerber said.

With the information and the combined effort of county staff and elected officers, Gerber said she hopes Moffat County will avoid having to make sudden, drastic cuts down the road.

Spending cuts — which could affect public services and personnel — will happen, officials have said, but no one wants to rush decisions that could have unforeseen or severe consequences.

“It’s being very thought out,” Gerber said. “We have time to react. By doing it this way, it gives us time to work through decisions and make educated, well thought-out plans for the future.”

Gerber has said previously she and the commissioners want to avoid instituting across-the-board cuts, which can cripple small departments unable to weather the loss of even one person.

She and the commissioners have spent the past six months going through the budget line-by-line, Gerber said, so they can prioritize their expenses more precisely.

The commission plans to make a final adoption of the county’s 2010 budget at its regular meeting Dec. 15, which is open to the public.

For more information about the budget and the budget process, call Gerber at her office at 824-9140.

Collin Smith can be reached at 875-1794 or cesmith@craigdailypress.com.