Lane County, Eugene and Springfield officials have all started setting their individual multimillion-dollar budgets for the next fiscal year.
To cover expenses from July 1 to June 30, 2022, the management has proposed budgets from:
- $ 767,757,739 in Lane County
- $ 724,251,750 in Eugene
- $ 351,436,010 in Springfield
Administrators from all three countries sat down with The Register-Guard to discuss the financial situation and provide a full overview of their proposed budgets.
Here’s what city and county officials want people to take away their suggestions and presentations.
Resources affected by the pandemic have already decreased
There’s always a question as to why local government “struggles to fund the services that citizens expect,” said Nathan Bell, Springfield chief financial officer.
Government voting measures passed in the 1990s limit both property taxes and the ability of local governments to increase these taxes each year. These are often the main source of income, Bell said.
It is understandable that voters passed these measures, he said, but they “put a collar on our main source of funding” and continue to affect local governments
Despite plans to cut spending, Eugene will be in deficit by around mid-2025, said Twylla Miller, the city’s budget manager.
“We have very little reserves here, and we do that because the needs of the community and the organization are great,” said city administrator Sarah Medary.
For Lane County, property tax caps came in around the same time as logging revenues were declining, County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky said
The county used to get a lot of logging revenue, he said, and Lane County has one of the lowest permanent property tax rates.
“This is the perfect storm for us,” said Mokrohisky.
Then the pandemic came and resulted in lower revenues but an increased need for many government services.
The county saw $ 20 million less revenue, Mokrohisky said.
It impacted revenues in several funds for Springfield, including the general fund, the street fund, the temporary space tax fund, and the ambulance fund, Bell said. The city estimates the loss at around $ 4.4 million, spokeswoman Amber Fossen said in an email.
Miller said it had in some way impacted every city fund in Eugene.
All three companies have received restoration funds through the CARES Act, and they know the US bailout plan has more to come.
“That (money) is likely to make us sane for the most part in terms of those effects (from the pandemic),” Bell said.
Federal aid will not solve structural revenue problems
However, the federal money is not a long-term solution, said Mokrohisky.
He called it a “mixed bag”. Getting the public to understand the implications of money can be difficult because while it “is important to replace the reserves we had to burn through” it does not fix ongoing problems.
The American bailout plan will allocate money to replenish the reserve officers used to cover costs so the county can hire more people for contact tracing and other needs without laying off other staff or cutting down on services, he said.
But the funds are not in the budget, he said, because the leadership did not want to use one-time money to offset the funds.
The new round of funding also has no impact on Springfield’s budget process, Bell said.
When the city started planning the budgeting process in October and then opened the budget software to the departments in December, it wasn’t yet clear what the second round would look like, he said.
“We just got our budget implemented with what we knew,” said Bell.
According to Medary, Eugene officials “have a lot of hope” in the US rescue plan, but are still looking for clarity and security.
Since the funds can be used for a few years, she said it was “time to take a deep breath” and think about the most effective way to use the money within the guidelines.
Maintaining services while improving financial stability
Things are definitely lean, Bell said, particularly in the general fund that finances most of Springfield’s city services.
Still, “it’s not all doom and darkness,” he said.
“We’re trying to invest in areas where we can,” said Bell.
One example of this, he said, is the use of additional road funding available through the Keep Oregon Moving passage.This state law, passed in 2017, increased various taxes and fees to help state and local authorities pay for transport improvements, including road construction.
“Hopefully our citizens will see some positive impact in the community,” he said.
A main theme of the county’s proposed budget is finding opportunities within the crisis, Mokrohisky said.
In his seven years as a county As an administrator, he has tried to focus on keeping the funds in balance, but also maintaining the services and making targeted investments when possible. The proposed budget is the fourth year in which the most important operating resources are “structurally balanced”.
Mokrohisky says it will also advance long-term priorities, including providing affordable housing, housing the homeless, making sure employees enjoy their jobs, and improving behavioral health and other services to keep people in need of treatment out Land prison beds.
Eugene is also focused on maintaining fiscal health while providing required community service, Medary said.
“We still have a lot to do, but we’re stable and delivering the services that this community really wants us to deliver now,” she said.
The city is shifting resources within the fire and rescue service to focus staff time on basic calls, which make up most of the service calls. Departments, including the Eugene Police Department, are also delaying postings.
Through one-off, two-off, and persistent declines and postponements in funding, Medary said, the city is releasing $ 4.6 million to invest in the Ambulance Transport Fund and downtown for ongoing, one-time investments to combat homelessness Help the Bethel District prepare for a neighborhood planning process and invest in town hall, human services, and climate recovery.
Achieving that is not an easy process, she said.
“It was a tough budget,” said Medary. “It was hard to get there.”
Some government and community priorities have been left out
Part of the difficulty was the fact that many items cannot be fully or guaranteed to be funded.
Eugene had hoped to continue supporting efforts to help the uninhabited and cope with the climate crisis, Medary said.
“There are a lot of things the community would like to see,” she said.
The city had “just come out (from the effects of the recession) and has hit the starting point and is ready to hire” when the pandemic and revenue took a hit, making it harder to fund some priorities, Medary said.
She added that the changes to the emergency response won’t limit service, but “it’s quite challenging once you start going into and adjusting your fire and rescue services”.
Springfield is focused on providing “the highest level of service at the lowest possible cost,” Bell said, but additional money would help long-term efforts.
If the city had more revenue, officials would likely save them to fix the delayed maintenance backlog that is likely to develop soon.
“When faced with decisions like cuts in services like public safety, you will be postponing maintenance that will affect the future rather than cutting the public safety that can affect today,” said Bell.
According to Mokrohisky, there is a great need at the district level, and the department heads are making more inquiries than in previous years.
Leadership funded all of these requests at some level, said Christine Moody, the county’s budget and financial planning manager.
But the county would like to do more, said Moody and Mokrohisky.
Moody identified infrastructure as an area where there were more requests than additions.
Mokrohisky points out data analysis and public safety, especially land patrols.
Overall, he said, the county’s finances are thin on the ground.
“Our budget is stable but stressed,” he said.
Contact city government watchdog Megan Banta at mbanta@registerguard.com. Follow her on Twitter @ MeganBanta_1.
Learn more about budgets
Lane County: Watch the budget presentation at youtube.com/watch?v=mA0PwVvF-k0. Further information on the budget proposal and procedure can be found at http://bit.ly/lane-fy22-budget.
Eugene: Watch the budget presentation at youtube.com/watch?v=SR2k5TqEorw&t=3049s. For more information on the budget proposal and procedure, visit eugene-or.gov/106/Budget
Springfield: View budget presentations at bit.ly/SpfldFY22Budget. For more information on the budget proposal and process, visit springfield-or.gov/city/finance/budget-committee-meetings-agendas/.
