Now is the time to save for a rainy day, not the time for a tax cut.

That's a tentative consensus reached by Fayette County commissioners Monday night during their first in-depth workshop on the fiscal 2000 budget.

A rainy day is coming, county administrator Billy Beckett assured the group. “I would suggest that any excess be set aside to apply on a priority basis” to any of several crises that will face the county in the near future, he told the group. “They're coming, you can count on that,” he added.

The group tentatively approved the budget requests of six out of 42 county departments, plus all ten special revenue funds. They will plow through the rest of the $48.6 million budget in three more work sessions in hopes of adopting the document June 24.

Commissioner Greg Dunn opened a more philosophical discussion of the budget when he questioned the county's reserve funds and pointed out that revenue this year is expected to increase by 7 percent.

“Have we considered at all finding a way to return some of that to the taxpayers rather than finding a way to spend it?” Dunn wondered.

Commissioner Linda Wells ticked off a list of expensive problems the county faces in the near future and said, “We don't have excess money.”

Beckett said that in reality, the 2000 budget proposes returning $1.3 million to the taxpayers. That's how much money is being shifted from the reserve fund into the general fund.

But that money won't go back into taxpayers' pockets. It will simply pay for some of the expenditures for FY2000, thus preventing any tax increase.

In his written introduction to the proposed budget, Beckett pointed out that the county is facing the immediate need to build a new jail and judicial complex, the planned Lake McIntosh construction project and numerous other water-related projects, plus new environmental standards.

For instance, counties in the near future may be required to collect and treat storm water runoff before releasing it into streams, a requirement that would cost Fayette millions of dollars, he said.

“You don't have nearly as much as you think you do,” Beckett said of the reserve funds.

Commissioners asked for a detailed accounting of reserve funds, showing how much of reserves are “encumbered” — earmarked for projects the county is already committed to — and how much are actually available for future use or for tax cuts.

Meanwhile, Dunn said he understands the need to save for a rainy day. “I'm a realist... it's [tax cut] not going to happen this year.”

But he left the group with the rhetorical question: “Our property taxes all went up for the seventh straight year... when are we doing to give people a break?”

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