Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER in /home/stparch/public_html/headmid_temp_main.php on line 4394
Newspaper Archive of
Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
HOME Browse Search List Of All Titles New! Global Image Search
Free Search  Subscribe  Sign In
December 1, 2016     Shelton Mason County Journal
PAGE 2     (2 of 52 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
© Shelton Mason County Journal. All rights reserved.     Upgrade to access Premium Tools
 
PAGE 2     (2 of 52 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
December 1, 2016
 
Newspaper Archive of Shelton Mason County Journal produced by SmallTownPapers, Inc.
Website © 2025. All content copyrighted. Copyright Information
Terms Of Use | Privacy Policy | Request Content Removal | About / FAQ | Get Acrobat Reader




Page A-2 - Shelton-Mason County Journal- Thursday, Dec. 1,2016 Final public hearing on county budget will be Monday By MICHAEL HEINBACH michael@masoncounty com With six days remaining before a finalized 2017 Mason County general ftmd budget was set to go before a public hearing, two of three sitting county commissioners held a final public budget brief- ing workshop in commission chambers Tuesday morning, all but wrapping up a nearly three-month process. "Budgeting is always a bal- ancing of competing priori- ties," Mason County Commis- sioner Terri Jeffreys told the Journal. "No request or no priority from one department is any more or less important than another. Our efforts have , always been, as I've stated earlier, to retain and be able to recruit a qualified workforce because the services of the county to the public I think is the most important thing we do. And we strived to try and bring salaries up as much as we could with a sustainable budget." The most notable of recent cuts to the proposed balanced budget highlighted Tuesday included a delay in hiring an attorney in the prosecutor's office until March and an ad- ditional $25,000 reduction in the prosecutor's operating budget, the denial of requests by the Mason County Sheriffs Office for $375,000 to purchase new vehicles, an increase of $121,232 of overtime for Sher- iffs office staff and a leveling of sheriff Casey Salisburfs salary at 22 percent above that of other elected officials. County director of support services Frank Pinter held court on the nearly completed budget for about 40 minutes with commissioners Jeffreys and Randy Neatherlin -- com- missioner Tim Sheldon didn't attend -- before the watchful eyes of representatives from several county departments, including Mason County pros- ecuting attorney Michael Dor- cy, undersheriff Jim Barrett and Sheriffs Office chief ad- ministrative deputy Theresia Ehrich. Pinter outlined what he and the commissioners hoped would be the last few amendments to 2017's gen- eral fund budget, which totals around $31.5 million. Jeffreys thanked the trea- surer's office for its willingness to work with reductions, wb_ile Neatherlin thanked Dorcy for volunteering the cuts to his de- partment's budget requests at the briefing. "I want to say thank you to the prosecutor," Neatherlin said. "This came late after ev- erybody had met and the pros- ecutor came in while we were still running short and we asked if he would delay a hire in order to save us $15,000. I just want people to know that he gave that up so that we could be where we're at, in ad- dition to the $25,000 he gave up before that. I just want you to know that was a way of kicking in to help as a team and I wanted him to know that we appreciate it." At r being presented with budget requests this summer from each county department, the county commission pro- duced a preliminary unbal- anced budget before setting to work to close an $8 million gap between expenditures request- ed and the money the county has to work with. Beginning in September, Pinter and the commission set to work on making necessary cuts to bud- getary requests in order to come up with a balanced bud- get, as required by law. At Tuesday's final work- shop prior to the Dec. 5 public hearing, Pinter and the com- missioners all but completed the process, which has been no easy feat. Jeffreys said she was grate- ful for the work done by Pinter, who shouldered much of the arduous task of finding areas in which to trim dollars from the preliminary budget. "Frank has done a stellar job, having to go line by line tt Budgeting is always a balancing of competing priorities.., No request or no priority from one department is any more or less important than another," Terri Jeffreys, Mason County Commissioner through each of the depart- ments' office's budgets," she said. "He's worked three solid weekends as we've gotten down to the final stages and he's done a phenomenal job." As it currently stands, the 2017 county budget includes a 9 percent reserve which leaves little to no wiggle room for county departments pro- posing supplemental fimding requests throughout the calen- dar year. "We had an overabundance of supplemental budget re- quests in 2016, which ham- pered our ability to maintain a healthier cash balance," Jeffreys said. "We as a corn- mission are very dependent on each of the elected officials and department heads to man- age within their existing and approved budget and to not consider the option of a budget supplement unless it's abso- lutely unanticipated." Monday's public hearing on the county's finalized budget is scheduled for 9 a.m. in com- mission chambers. "Our hope, we want to adopt on Monday," said Jeffreys. "But if something comes up in the public hearing that would give us cause, we could con- tinue that hearing and we are prepared to then continue the next day until it's finished."