County leaders explain priorities in FY09 budget
By Art Warren and Dan Gecker CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR, CHESTERFIELD BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Warren

The Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors adopted the county's Fiscal Year 2009-10 Biennial Financial Plan at its Apr. 9 meeting. This meeting was the culmination of a process that began in September 2007, prior to the election of four of the five members of the current board. The final product required the balancing of many interests that compete for limited resources.

We faced a budget process that was constrained by a forecast of zero growth in the revaluation of residential properties (assessments of existing homes are forecast to remain the same). This is the first time in many years that a board has found itself in this circumstance. Therefore, one of the themes that guided the budget process was that every dollar had to be well spent. Every proposed new position in the administrative side of the government was scrutinized. The total number of requested new positions added, outside of the school budget, was one quarter of the average for the past four years, with one half of those positions being in public safety. At the same time, there were clear priorities that the board wanted to fund.

Gecker

The core missions of the county are public safety and education. We have been faced with significant turnover in these areas and wanted to address that issue. In addition, compensation of county employees has not increased at the same rate as in the private sector for those performing similar work. There is a clear desire to have our employees' compensation packages be competitive with surrounding jurisdictions and the private sector.

Although school funding is a very signifi- cant part of the budget, the board of supervisors does not have any "line-item" rights with regard to the school division's budget. The board of supervisors essentially allocates a lump sum to the school division. The school division is then able to spend this amount as it sees fit.

This budget, in keeping with the county's focus on maintaining education as a top priority, allows for a 4.5 percent increase in the schools' budget. Based on information provided by the school administration, this amount is sufficient to provide the merit pay increases to our teachers that had been requested to bring their compensation scale to market (raises, on average, of 5.6 percent). We hope that the school division will look inward as we have to see where non-service-related economies can be found.

The budget adopted on Apr. 9 is lean. It contains the smallest percentage increase in the general fund - 2.3 percent - of any Chesterfield County budget in memory. The total number of 24 new employees also is a fraction of the growth that usually accompanies the county's financial plan, and keeps pace with citizen demands for services in key areas while holding the number of new positions to a minimum.

A local government's day-to-day provision of services is only as good as the employees who deliver those services. Consistent with the employee compensation goal mentioned above, the board approved a 4 percent merit increase, with up to an additional 1.25 percent available as a tool for the county to use in addressing particular areas of need, such as in recruitment and retention, instances of salary compression and turnover. The majority of tax dollars going into the general fund will fund public safety services and programs, with fees and restricted revenues providing funding for many other county operations.

The county is one of only about two dozen localities in the nation to have AAA bond ratings from all three major bond rating agencies - Standard & Poor's, Fitch and Moody's. This saves county taxpayers millions of dollars in interest that a lesser-credentialed locality would have to pay.

This was this board of supervisors' first budget process. It is difficult sometimes to remember that we have been in office only 100 days. Our work is just beginning. The budget for FY10 will be entirely ours, from start to finish. Those of us serving our residents on the board believe we have struck the most careful balance possible to respect the tax dollars of the hard-working residents of our county and maintain the level of excellence they have come to expect from one of the premiere local governments in the nation. It is a privilege to have been part of that process.