Letter to all Employees from the CEO

Dear County Employee,

This week, we begin hearings for our Final Budget for FY 2010-11. Despite tremendous challenges, including multiple lawsuits, we have balanced our budget, pending impacts from the state budget.

We are making about $30M in adjustments to our June budget. The adjustments are fully funded and will not automatically add to any future budget debt. The adjustments are a combination of $30M in costs, combined with $30M in additional funds, netting out to zero change to our overall budget. The major sources of funds include carryover, fund balances, reserves from the Teeter fund, Capital Construction funds and Transient Occupancy Tax.

We are expecting some reductions from the state in specific services and are monitoring their activities closely. Any further reductions will most likely be department specific; i.e. if the State cuts “Program A” spending, then we would cut that program accordingly. It is still too soon to predict what the state will do, and when we know what the impacts will be, we will amend the FY 10-11 Budget as necessary.

During the last two years we have made some difficult choices in order to balance our budget and help create long term stability for our organization. Since FY 07/08, we’ve reduced the overall size of our budget by 31%; from $5.08B to $3.5B this year. Since FY 07/08 the size of our work force has been reduced by about 22%; from 14,500 FTE to 11,265 FTE.

Though these choices have not been easy, and we are still grappling with the changes, reducing the size of our organization was absolutely necessary. I thank all of you for persevering during these changes and remaining committed to preserving quality County services.

Steve Szalay