Manatee County aims to balance its budget

Manatee County Administrator Ed Hunzeker has a message for his employers and the public: In 2018, Manatee County will face serious funding problems if it doesn’t find another way to do business.

“We’re going to be facing some challenges down the road, and we’re going to have to take some action to avoid any (problems) of a financial nature,” he said.

Since 2007, Manatee County has terminated about 300 employees and shrunk its budget by $40.3 million. It’s still collecting $39.4 million less than in 2007, all while growing in population by about 50,000. 

“We have not expanded existing service,” Hunzeker said.

Since 2009, Manatee County has been using excess reserves, created from operating overages during the real estate boom years, to fund budgetary needs after the recession began. Those excess dollars, collectively referred to as the stabilization fund, have allowed the county to maintain levels of service, despite lower revenues from property taxes.

“We’ve been doing what we’ve been doing for so long, people think its the right thing to do,” Hunzeker said. “In that light, it could have been perceived as having a budget that was sustaining over time. But it’s not.”

Although property values — and the revenue collected from property taxes — are once again rising,  the county is still spending more than it’s generating. Stabilization funds are set to run out by fiscal year 2018 or sooner because of funding needed for indigent health care, maintenance and repair of aging infrastructure and County Commission directives, such as funding two positions for the property appraiser’s office.

The county has set aside money for specific items, such as a replacement helicopter for the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and beach renourishment projects, but it has failed to set aside dollars for other costs, such as replacing 20-year-old playground equipment at parks or other aging assets.

“We have no dedicated revenue stream to pay for those items when they wear out,” said Hunzeker, who retires in January 2018.

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Hunzeker says the county needs to consider diversifying its revenue stream by implementing options such as a half-cent sales tax, franchise and stormwater fees and removing the fund that collects taxes from unincorporated areas from the general fund. 

Taking such actions will allow the county to shift many costs soley from property owners to users of Manatee’s services. For example, a stormwater fee would be applied to all users of the system and, consequently, that item could be removed from the county’s millage, creating a broader user base.

Hunzeker proposed such concepts to commissioners in January 2013 as part of the county’s “How will we grow?” and “How will we pay?” discussions, adding it would have produced a potential 27% reduction in countywide property taxes and 14% reduction in unincorporated Manatee. But he said he did not pursue it further because the board and public had such a negative reaction to it.

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Manatee also has not increased its millage rates since 2008.

Hunzeker now wants to appoint a citizens advisory committee to find solutions to Manatee’s budget woes, asking commissioners to appoint financially minded individuals from their respective districts. He envisions that group learning about the budget’s inner workings, listening to administrators from other counties and then creating a transparent, publicly supported solution for the county’s budget. 

“I’d like to be able to say we’re a lean, mean fighting machine and we’ve figured out how to (maintain level of service without raising costs), but (that’s wrong),” he said. “What are these other governments paying for that we’re not? They have a funding source. For example, all these other counties pay for health care.”

Hunzeker hopes the committee can come together within the next 60 days and the group can put together a recommendation by early 2016. In the meantime, he’s awaiting needs assessments from his various department heads. Among those, he expects a billion-dollar needs list for repairs to the county’s roadway infrastructure.

“If they don’t take action, they hit a wall,” Hunzeker said.