County wrestles with budget figures

By DAVE CALDWELL, Staff Writer dcaldwell@minotdailynews.com

The Ward County Commission grappled with its preliminary budget figures Tuesday in an effort to keep spending in line with new growth in the county.

Finding an effective balance between providing county government services and keeping the mill levy down, however, is proving to be a contentious issue for the board.

With budget requests up nearly $2 million, the commissioners are finding themselves at odds sometimes with themselves and sometimes with other entities on just how to keep spending under control.

One hot-button issue of late has been the disagreement between the county and the City of Minot on how much the city should reimburse the county in its contract with the office of the Ward County State's Attorney.

John Van Grinsven III, Ward County state's attorney, is seeking another state's attorney position for his office, citing backlog caused by increased activity at almost all levels. The county has countered that providing prosecutorial services to the city at a low price while requesting more in his budget due to high workloads makes no sense if it can't recover more money from the city.

At a recent liaison meeting between city and county representatives, county officials proposed that the contract basically double in price, from $30,000 to $60,000 per year. City officials were not very receptive to that idea and basically threatened to hire their own attorney to prosecute city cases in Minot's Municipal Court. Alderman Chuck Barney went so far as to suggest that he had already looked at preliminary figures and that they looked encouraging. The city and county officials then decided to take a $40,000 proposal back to their respective entities for consideration.

Commissioner Jim Lee immediately brought up information given to the board by Cindy Hemphill, Minot's finance director, at a recent meeting that said the city pays its attorney more than $120 per hour in its contract. The county's proposal of $60,000, based on actual hours put in by the state's attorney's office, would average about $70 per hour.

"He (Barney) said, 'I think we can cover it for that,'" Lee said. "Well, if they can probably cover it for that, I think they probably should try, because I don't think they'd be successful."

Van Grinsven told the board that the situation was workable for his office, because increased interaction between the city and district courts led to consolidation of many matters, thus actually saving time for his office in some instances.

Commissioner Jerome Gruenberg cautioned that a hard-line stance against the city might cost the county money that is currently used to subsidize the attorneys.

"If you insist on $60,000, the money that they are paying us is going to go away," Gruenberg said. "And then, if you want to talk about putting it on the backs of the taxpayers, we're still going to need those attorneys and you're going to have to raise taxes to pay them."

"Where are they going to get an attorney for 70 bucks an hour?" Lee asked.

"For $60,000, they'll hire one," Gruenberg replied.

"We're asking the city to pay more money for a state's attorney than what we're hiring for here in Ward County," said commission chairman Carroll Erickson.

The decision whether to approve Van Grinsven's preliminary budget as presented was deadlocked at 2-2 at a budget hearing. Lee moved a substitute motion to approve the budget contingent on the city paying $60,000 to the county.

"We have a budget increase requested of over 10 percent," Lee said. "We have new growth of 2.9 percent. That's an economic wreck waiting to happen."

"If we don't ask for what's fair for our people working for us which is the $60,000 why are we subjecting our state's attorney's people to a lower cost than it would cost them to do it themselves?" asked Commissioner John Fjeldahl. "It's not fair to the taxpayers in the rest of the county."

Lee's substitute motion failed 3-2 with himself and Fjeldahl supporting it.

"When we voted to take this to the liaison committee, I voted yes to the $60,000 request," Gruenberg said. "I did that in order to take it to the city for discussion. We came back with what I think is a fair offer. The people in Minot also pay Ward County taxes, so they're already paying for some of it. If they hire their own attorney, some of our own attorneys are going to come up short in salaries."

The majority agreed with Gruenberg, with Erickson and Darlene Watne joining him in voting 3-2 to approve the state's attorney's budget including the hiring of another attorney.

Although several other department's budgets were approved, the board declined to pass the 2009 preliminary budget until finding out what happened on the city end of the issue, which was scheduled to be taken up Tuesday night at the city council meeting.

Throughout the meeting, Lee and Fjeldahl took a firm stance against the higher dollar amounts scheduled to be expended in the new budget, and while the other commissioners didn't appear to be thrilled about the situation, they were also reluctant to do what they figured would be slashing county services in order to save money. Lee and Fjeldahl repeatedly referred to the state's surplus of more than $1 billion while it trumpeted property tax relief while counties were ordered to pay more for what were once state programs.

"These are pathetic circumstances that have been created by the state once again," Lee said. "Over a billion dollars sits there, and the county residents are supposed to suck it up and pay more taxes while in the meantime everybody's crying for property tax relief. That's insane."

"Do you guys ever intend on dealing with any of these escalating costs, or are you just going to keep approving everything?" Fjeldahl asked his fellow commissioners. "How do we get this balanced where we're not running faster than people's lives are here?"

"Well, John, I'm not sure how we do that," Gruenberg said. "You guys sit and point your fingers at the state, the state, the state, but you're beating up on the people in this room. Let's go after the Legislature."

"We never have," Lee retorted.

"Well, maybe it's time we do," Gruenberg said.

In other business:

The board voted to put three measures on the November ballot. The first would approve the formation of a county advisory committee to research government issues. The second would establish a county building fund of 5 mills to be established for six years, from 2010 to 2016, which would raise up to just more than $4.68 million to be used to build, renovate or maintain county buildings. The third asks to increase the maximum Farm-to-Market mill levy for county roads from 10 mills to 15 mills from 2010 to 2016.

The county hired a company called Private Sector at a cost of $37,000 to conduct a salary and reclassification study for county employees.

The board is scheduled to meet this morning at 8 a.m. to consider the city's action on the prosecution contract and, pending the outcome, to approve the preliminary budget for 2009.