I t is budget time again for governmental agencies, but just because an agency or department needs or wants something doesn’t mean they will always get what they request.
The county budget process started in July with departments submitting their requests through the county administrator. He then put those requests together with directions from the supervisors to come up with a preliminary budget.
The budget was then brought to the table for discussion with department heads allowed to make their cases to supervisors on what they needed and why.
This year the county agreed to hold the line on the budget after increasing it last year by 3 mills to meet budget requests and provide funding for services the Board of Supervisors themselves offer to the community, the main ones being road and bridge infrastructure and garbage pickup.
Now this is far from all they actually offer and fund. They fund items like county library services. They fund programs like economic development and a park commission. They provide funding for the legal system for the county and its residents.
But one of the services people in the community hold the supervisors most accountable for is the local road network, and if those roads are problematic year after year, the voters become displeased with their supervisors.
One of the problems of operating the road department is its workers do not earn a good wage for the work they do. Much of their work is intense manual labor, in addition to having to know how to operate equipment. The problem is that younger people are not interested in doing hard manual labor for low pay and then, in many cases, having to take a second job to make ends meet.
The one advantage is the fact that the benefits are good. County employees get insurance as well as retirement benefits. But a wage of $10 to $13 per hour limits who will work and in some respects the quality of those candidates.
This is not only true of people in the road department. Think about law enforcement officers. Would you be willing to go out and risk your life for the amount of money they earn? Their relatively low pay is part of the reason for the high turnover in many law enforcement agencies.
One person put it, “Well they knew what they were signing on for when they accepted the job.” The other side of that equation is, “You get what you pay for.” If you don’t pay a reasonable wage it is hard to find qualified candidates.
At this point a preliminary county budget is close to being adopted. Times for budget hearings are drawing close. Once they are held, the board, will have to adopt the budget and they will move on down the road with whatever happens because of it.
