{"id":11719,"date":"2019-07-19T17:32:04","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T17:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=11719"},"modified":"2019-07-19T17:32:04","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T17:32:04","slug":"county-spending-plan-still-2-million-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/19\/county-spending-plan-still-2-million-short\/","title":{"rendered":"County Spending Plan Still $2 Million Short"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commissioners have one month to balance budget<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Hayden Seder<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Blaine County Clerk JoLynn Drage. Photo credit: Blaine County<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blaine County commissioners last week began deliberating on a spending plan for fiscal year 2020 that starts with a shortfall of $5.6 million. The gap represents the difference between what county department heads say they need to operate and how much revenue the county expects to collect next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started with a $5.6 million deficit on Thursday of last week and are now down to $2.2 million after Thursday, so we\u2019re still a ways from setting a tentative budget,\u201d County Clerk JoLynn Drage said.<\/p>\n

Hearings are open to the public and there will be two more sessions at the commissioners\u2019 meeting room; one on Wednesday, July 17, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and another on Thursday, July 18, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.<\/p>\n

Before the hearings, various departments of Blaine County put in requests and stated budget needs to the board. These departments include administrative services, assessor\u2019s office, auditor, Blaine County Fair, courts, emergency communications, geographical information systems, information technology, land use and building services, liability insurance, noxious weeds, probation, prosecuting attorney, recorder, recycling, road and bridge, sheriff, treasurer and waterways. To see what each department is requesting for their budgets, documents are available on the county website.<\/p>\n

After this week\u2019s meetings, a tentative budget must be set and published no later than the third week of August, Drage said.<\/p>\n

Blaine County School District<\/b><\/p>\n

Blaine County School District has also launched its rounds of budget hearings for the 2019\u20132020 school year. According to the district, trustees will be drafting the spending plan using so-called budget guiding principles. They include funding priorities such as:<\/p>\n

Provide support to accomplish the district\u2019s Strategic Plan goals<\/p>\n

Provide equity in resources to ensure all students meet and exceed standards (close the achievement\/opportunity gap)<\/p>\n

Maintain district commitment to its Class Size Policy, which values small classes<\/p>\n

Maintain a balanced budget while building an unassigned fund balance<\/p>\n

Trustees have been pressed hard in recent weeks by a group called I-Care (Idaho Citizens for Accountable, Responsible Education) to restrain administrative costs, which they feel are increasing too much when compared to student population and student performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe budget hasn\u2019t been our focus, but no matter what the district claims, administrative costs go up every year and all administrators received a raise this year and we think overall administrative costs are far too high,\u201d said Barbara Browning, a concerned Valley resident who has led the charge to see Superintendent GwenCarol Holmes terminated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commissioners have one month to balance budget By Hayden Seder Blaine County commissioners last week began deliberating on a spending plan for fiscal year 2020 that starts with a shortfall of $5.6 million. The gap represents the difference between what county department heads say they need to operate and how much revenue the county expects […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,18,49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blaine-county","7":"category-news","8":"category-top-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}