Stark county officials make pitches for funding

Nov. 22--CANTON -- This is the time of year when officials tell Stark County commissioners what's on their holiday wish lists, mainly more funding for their agencies.

The commissioners kicked off their first day of the 2018 budget hearings with presentations from top officials at the Board of Elections, judges from the Stark County Common Pleas Court, the Stark County Auditor and Probate Judge Dixie Park.

This year and last year, the commissioners began the hearings in November with the goal of announcing funding appropriations for each county agency by Christmas.

In the past, the final budget was often not ready by January or even February after the commissioners made the initial provisional appropriations to cover the first quarter. Last year, their office released the 2017 budget by mid-December, which may be the earliest in recent memory. By law, the commissioner must approve the county's budget by the end of March.

Chris Nichols, the commissioners' director of management and budget, explained the county's revenue and financial situation. He expects general fund and criminal justice fund revenue to decline by roughly $2 million a year due to the state's repeal of the sales tax on spending by Medicaid Managed Care Organizations. The county also will begin repaying the more than $10 million it borrowed to finance its new countywide radio system. And Nichols expects the revenue from conveyance fees collected on home sales will decline as he believes the record sales are not sustainable.

Nearly all of the budget requests featured raises of 2 percent for most county employees. It's a figure that commissioners have generally allowed to stay in line with inflation but have resisted larger amounts unless an employee is assigned more responsibilities, promoted or the employee's salary is substantially less than for another worker in a comparable position.

Stark County Commissioner Janet Weir Creighton said like in past years, "they don't all get what they ask for including the commissioners. ... just all the capital items, we can't do them all in one year."

Here are some highlights of the budget discussions:

--The Stark County Board of Elections requested a 22.3 percent increase to $2.81 million. But that's because 2018 will feature a primary and general statewide election with a race for governor while 2017 featured mainly local elections that attracted lower turnout. The board's deputy director, Jeanette Mullane, asked for the commissioners to fund a raise in poll worker pay from $7.25 an hour to $8.57 an hour or $20 more a day, because of the need to train more workers to use the new electronic poll books and difficulty in recruiting qualified candidates.

She and the board's director, Jeff Matthews, also asked for more funding to cover more security measures, new lighting and new fencing that would cost $10,000 for the parking lot for the Board's offices at Regent Avenue NE. Theyrequested new computers, enlarged work stations, installing a front security desk area, furniture, Americans with Disability Act equipment and new polling books along with the fencing would cost about $130,000.

--The Stark County Common Pleas Court requested a 4.5 percent hike to $4.87 million. However, the request does not reflect that the court Monday learned that it was awarded a $211,000 state grant to cover the cost of hiring a probation officer and part of the funding for a day jail monitor in addition to drug testing and GPS ankle bracelets for those on house arrest, Dwaine Hemphill, the court's administrator, said.

Hemphill who was accompanied by three judges said that a state law requiring that people convicted of fifth-degree non-violent felony crimes could generally not be sent to a state prison meant that the court would need more funding to monitor such offenders on probation. He also said that the court is losing probation officers to other agencies that pay more, so the court requested an 8 percent salary hike for probation officers, which would cost about $34,600.

--Auditor Alan Harold requested a 7.1 percent increase for the general-fund operations of his office to $1.12 million a year. He cited the expected 7 percent increase in health insurance premiums, a promotion of a payroll specialist, a need to hire an employee to replace a worker who's retiring in 2018, the need to pay the retiring employee's vacation cash payout and the need to increase the salary of the accounting manager by 12 percent because he earns much less than other local government accounting managers.

--Probate Court Judge Park asked for a 0.6 percent increase to $1.06 million. Park reported that the court got a grant of $312,500 a year for two years from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to cover the cost to hire a director of the court's program where volunteers visits wards of the state, a volunteer recruiter and for an attorney to oversee elder care. However, Nichols expressed concern over whether the county would have to assume funding of the positions if Park is unable to get additional grant funding after two years.

Hearings will not be held for county agencies if their officials did not seek one. The next budget hearings will be Wednesday for the county prosecutor's office at 11:30 a.m., the facilities department at noon and Stark County Soil and Water at 12:30 p.m. On Nov. 29, the Stark County Fair Board is scheduled for 10 a.m., the Stark County Sheriff at 10:30 a.m. and the commissioners will hold a hearing on the County Obligations portion of the general fund budget, which includes contributions to the Multi-County Juvenile Attention System.

Creighton made it clear to the officials she wasn't promising any level of funding.

"We'll be in touch with you," she said.

Reach Repository writer Robert Wang at (330) 580-8327 or robert.wang@cantonrep.com. Twitter: @rwangREP

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