Commissioners also agree not to raise fee for athletic field lighting, citing worries about the effect on youth participation in sports
Their goal on Jan. 31, laid out by administration, was to come up with about $5.6 million in cuts to ensure a balanced budget for the 2019 fiscal year. At the end of about four hours of presentations and discussions, the Sarasota County commissioners unanimously approved $5,391,350 in department reductions.
They spared their library system from the necessity of closing on Mondays, and they chose not to implement a recommended 25% increase in fees for lights on athletic fields expected to save $40,000.
The latter proposal called for an increase from $10 to $12.50 per hour for youth events; and from $20 to $25 per hour for adult activities and tournaments.
“I’m more in favor of increasing the level of service in our libraries,” Commissioner Charles Hines pointed out. “We’ve seen the diverse group” making that plea, he added, which he characterized as “‘Don’t cut service, for crying out loud! Increase service!’”
“You’re looking at taking our community in an opposite direction,” he said of the proposed reductions.
“I think all five of us support increased money for the libraries,” Chair Nancy Detert told County Administrator Jonathan Lewis. “I think we’ve all lived here long enough to know our community, and I agree with Commissioner Hines that people … expect improved service. They expect Sarasota County to be better than any place else.”
Earlier in the day, Detert had joked with Sarabeth Kalajian, director of the county’s Libraries and Historical Resources Department, about the “hordes of fans” who have pleaded with the board to spare the libraries from reductions as it has worked toward balancing future budgets. “It would be easier if we had somebody terrible at their job that nobody stuck up for,” Detert added.
The proposed elimination of an extra day when the 10 county libraries are open would save about 9% in the expense for services and 3% in the staffing cost, Kalajian told the board, resulting in savings of $197,142. That proposal, she continued, was reached among her staff “after lots and lots of deliberation. … This is the dilemma of dilemmas for us.”
It would be more efficient to close for another whole day, Kalajian pointed out, than to try to cut hours for each of the six days the facilities are open.
As for the lighting fee hike: Hines told Carolyn N. Brown, director of the Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Department (PRNR), “You’re going to start hearing a lot of pushback from all of our youth organizations who already feel they pay too much for lights,” if such a change goes into effect.
He added of those groups, “These are nonprofit organizations. They’re coaching; they’re selling hamburgers in the concession stand.”
If the fee were raised, he continued, either the organizations would have to increase their participation fees, which many parents could not afford, or they would have to plan more fundraisers to generate extra revenue. “Twenty percent of the people [in such nonprofits] do 80% of the work,” he pointed out.
“I served on a Little League board when [the lighting fee] first went into effect,” Hines said, “and there was a lot of pushback and there was a lot of hardship …”
Among other decisions, the board agreed to the proposed elimination of three Sarasota County Area Transit (SCAT) routes and the modification of Saturday’s schedule to conform to the Sunday level of service. The total savings have been estimated at $933,026.
Those changes in service will necessitate Federal Transit Administration approval and the opportunity for public comment, according to a document provided to the commissioners. They also would not take effect until Oct. 1, at the earliest, Interim SCAT Director Rob Lewis indicated.
They would entail the elimination of 16 full-time employees, he noted, and most of those would be bus operators.
The three routes are as follows:
- Express Route 100 from the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport/downtown Sarasota/Interstate-75 to North Port, which averages daily ridership of 50 people.
- Route 18 from downtown Sarasota to Bay Isles on Longboat Key, which averages 62 riders a day.
- Route 13 from Sarasota to Venice and South Venice, which averages 60 riders a day.
Among more minor cuts proposed on Jan. 31, Jeff Lowdermilk, director of the county’s General Services Department, explained that the county has between 150 and 200 plants distributed among its facilities, and he was “proposing that those go away.” That would save $22,000 a year in the expense of keeping them healthy.
Among the plants are a variety in the lobby of the second floor at the County Administration Center on Ringling Boulevard in downtown Sarasota, he said. That lobby separates the Office of the County Attorney and the County Commission/County Administration suites.
“I noticed those yesterday,” Detert told him. “And I thought, ‘Wow! They really look great,’” better than her plants inside her home, she noted.
Yet, she added, “Yeah, we can probably make those kind of sacrifices.”
Consternation over SCAT expenses
In discussing the SCAT budget, Rob Lewis told the board that the average ridership on Saturdays is 3,452. Typically, he said, the ridership on a Sunday is about 2,500 people. Therefore, the proposed change in nine routes on Saturdays would affect from 900 to 1,200 people, he added.
Route 100 was funded by a grant, Lewis noted, and it was continued after that assistance ended.
Pointing out that Route 18 averages 4.51 riders per hour and Route 13, 3.9 riders per hour, Commissioner Alan Maio asked Lewis, “Why in the world didn’t we do this last year?” That would have saved about $300,000, Maio said, which could have eliminated the need for Kalajian to propose the closing of libraries an extra day of the week.
County Administrator Lewis responded that he had promised all the department directors in advance of the Jan. 31 budget workshop that if the commissioners wanted to “beat somebody up,” it would have to be the administrators.
“And I love you, Rob Lewis,” Maio said, as Rob Lewis has stepped into the interim SCAT director’s role in the past when people holding that position have left. (The most recent SCAT director, Rocky Burke, left county employment in October 2017, county media relations staff told The Sarasota News Leader.)
Maio then said he would withdraw his question. Still, he continued, “Four point five people per hour; 3.9 people per hour, after hour, after hour. OK, I’ve said enough.”
Detert also told Rob Lewis she was pleased to see the elimination of the Express Route 100. When grant funds end, she noted, “We’re stuck paying the bill year after year after year. … These government grants shouldn’t be for all of eternity.”
Commissioner Hines pointed out that Route 100 began as a means of assisting “bedroom community” residents in North Port with transportation to North County jobs during the Great Recession. “We need to evaluate everything we do every single year,” he added, referring to SCAT operations.
As for the Longboat route: Hines indicated that he felt obligated to point out, “Where’s the major traffic problem in Sarasota County? It’s the Ringling Bridge.”
Hines was referring to county residents’ growing complaints about increased traffic congestion between Longboat and Lido keys and downtown Sarasota. The Florida Department of Transportation is at work on a Barrier Islands Traffic Study, whose release is due this spring; it will include recommendations for easing the problems.
Worries about library funding
During their discussion about the proposed Libraries and Historical Resources Department cuts, Director Kalajian also explained the likelihood that the planned 26% reduction in spending on collection resources would lead to a state funding cut.
The line item at the heart of that exchange estimated savings of $156,075 per year.
“This would result in decreased access to books and media,” Kalajian pointed out. The highest amount the county ever put toward that expense, according to her records, she said, was $967,376 in 2008. The state supplemented that with $404,000.
This year, she continued, her budget included county funds of $400,000 for books, media and magazines, with the state contributing $297,000.
“At the same time,” she told the board, “demand grows. So this is an area that’s of concern to some folks.”
Detert then asked whether the reduced county allocation for FY19 would affect the leveraging of state funds.
Generally, Kalajian responded, it takes about two years after a county cut in spending on collections for the state reduction to show up, partly because of the formula state officials use for allocations to county libraries.
Kalajian added that the county reduction represents “a little bit of a double whammy.” Yet, she noted, “our state aid has declined” over the past several years.
In response to another question from Detert, Kalajian said that the state total has been about $300,000 a year, whereas at its highest level, the amount was between $700,000 and $800,000.
“So the state aid could go down with or without these [county] cuts?” Jonathan Lewis asked.
“That’s correct,” Kalajian replied.
Still, Kalajian told the board, “State funding is really, really important to us.”
Mowing modifications
Yet another spending cut the board did not oppose outright on Jan. 31 calls for reducing the number of urban right of way mowing cycles from 26 to 17 per year.
A document provided by Public Works Department said the county is paying $52.20 per acre mowed per cycle, and the total number of acres in the urban rights of way is 1,133.26.
The reduction in cycles would save an estimated $354,923 a year.
The document explained, “The Urban [level of service] is the most frequent [of the three the county has] and includes regular maintenance on arterials, collectors and other landscaped transportation rights of way, with or without medians.”
The other levels of service pertain to residential and rural mowing, the document noted.
Commissioner Michael Moran did request the scheduling of a future board discussion on the county’s mowing ordinance, citing resident complaints that have resulted from earlier efforts to reduce expenses.
Diving into the numbers
At the outset of the budget workshop, County Administrator Lewis stressed that the 2018 fiscal year budget “is a structurally balanced budget.” Further, because the board members in November 2017 approved sales of surplus lands anticipated to bring in about $5.3 million, he said, the goal was to find $5.6 million in savings to ensure no gap in revenue for the 2019 fiscal year.
If referenda on proposed additional savings to homeowners through new homestead exemptions win approval on the November ballot, Lewis said, then the effects would be felt first in the county’s FY2020 fiscal year.
He had worked with all the department directors to come up with about $1.4 million in savings for FY19 that would entail no reductions in levels of service, Lewis continued. Therefore, the directors were present that day to answer questions about the proposals they and their staffs had made to come up with the remaining $4.2 million for FY19.
The commissioners did unanimously approve a motion to accept the $1.4 million in the proposed spending reductions for the departments.
In discussing the overall fiscal health of the county, Commissioner Maio asked Deputy County Administrator Steve Botelho about the county’s multiple reserve funds.
The county has approximately $147.5 million such funds, Botelho replied, including a 75-day account that would cover county operations in the event of an emergency. The best practice nationally for the latter, Botelho has pointed out during numerous budget workshops, is funding for 60 days.
Additionally, Jonathan Lewis and Botelho reminded the commissioners that the county has the highest bond rating recommended by the top three rating agencies — Fitch, Moody’s and S&P.