County’s turbine income to pay off loan to itself

In spite of gaining additional sales tax from the First Wind turbine project, the county still faces a $1.3 million deficit.

Gary Petrovich, county administrative director, said the county received construction sales tax from the wind farm in 2012 and this year.

The first year for property tax income from the wind turbines will come in 2014.

“That’s spoken for by a public works loan for a heating and cooling system in the sheriff’s building,” Petrovich said. He said the county had to take out the loan from public works funds because there was no money in the general fund to pay for the system.

County Treasurer Bob Lothspeich said the loan was for $600,000 and the repayment schedule begins next June and goes for seven years.

The first payment of $43,444 is due in June 2014 with a second payment due in December, a total of $86,889 per year. The payments will go back into public works.

Petrovich said the construction sales tax helped balance this year’s budget.

On Oct. 21, commissioners along with department managers heard that the projected budget deficit is a little more than $1.3 million, about one-tenth of the 2013 budget. This is the difference between the county’s projected revenue and the proposed budgets of county departments.

Petrovich said the deficit results from decreased revenue and increased expenses.

He said he continues to talk to department managers.

“We’re taking a look to find additional budget savings,” he said, adding that the elected officials and department heads are working very hard to trim budgets.

A chart showing proposed budgets for 23 departments listed the top four departments with the highest proposals. They are the sheriff’s department with a proposed budget of $3,469,530, an increase of almost $200,000 over this year; general government, $1,622,852, an increase of $384,230; public health, $1,095,690, a decrease of $71,534; and internet technology, $1,086,987, an increase of $169,751.

At next Monday’s county commissioners’ meeting, Petrovich said he will recap the year-to-date on expenses and revenue and where the county will likely finish at the end of 2013. He will then go over the 2014 budget once again and see what the deficit looks like at that time.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to balance the budget without the commissioners making some choices because obviously there’s not enough cash in the system to take care of the deficit,” he said.

“The county has to look at ways to reduce internal operations, internal paperwork operations,” Petrovich said. “We need to find ways to provide services to taxpayers that aren’t as costly and that also might mean we might have to cut some services.”

The county budget must be finalized by the end of this year.