More cuts ahead for courthouse

With no improvement in sight for a drastic revenue shortfall, Wahkiakum County commissioners on Tuesday indicated they were going to start the process for further, larger spending cuts in the courthouse.

The county Current Expense Fund, which finances most courthouse offices, is expected to have a $1.2 million shortfall this year. The county board of commissioners has already instituted spending controls, and Tuesday, Commissioners Dan Cothren and Blair Brady indicazated they may make more severe cuts after meeting with department heads next Tuesday.

Commissioner George Trott was in Texas with Sheriff Dan Bardsley and others to learn about safety procedures for liquefied natural gas operation.

This week, Brady, Cothren, Treasurer Paula Holloway, Auditor Diane Tischer and three citizens including candidates for county commissioner listened as staff of the Department of Natural Resources outlined their latest forecast of revenue that could be expected from county trust timberland.

Timber harvest revenue is traditionally a large part of the revenue stream for the county’s Current Expense Fund, which funds most courthouse offices, but DNR staff Marcus Johns, St. Helens District manager, and Collin Robertson, regional forester, said the timber market is expected to be down until late 2009.

Because of a DNR labeling error, county officials expected to receive $1.4 million in timber revenue in 2008; they learned in June that $740,000 of that total went to other trust beneficiaries instead of the county.

The DNR staff have tried to find small timber sales that will help, but market factors are conspiring against them. Robertson said the county could expect $335,000 in revenue by the end of 2008 from two sales of timber blown down in storms in the winter of 2006-07 and initial deposits from two sales that probably will be logged in 2009.

Johns said he asked the staff to find a small piece of timber to replace part of the mistaken revenue, and that sale is ready but will probably be logged in 2009.

Timber prices are very low, he added, less than half what they were a year ago. The agency tries to log 6,000 board feet a year for the county, but that volume now brings half the revenue, he said.

The county should receive $1.4 to $1.6 million in 2009 from timber sales, Robertson said.

Despite the steps already taken, the Current Expense Fund will need $600,000 in additional revenue to make it through 2008, said Treasurer Holloway.

That means commissioners are going to have to approve more borrowing from the county’s declining reserves, or they’re going to have to cut staff and services.

The county has already borrowed $500,000 from the Cumulative Reserve for Contingent Liabilities, and Holloway frowned on continued borrowing from reserves.

“You have to cut on the expense side,” she told Cothren and Brady. “If you keep borrowing without paying back, you’re going to be in a big debt hole.”

Cothren and Brady agreed.

“We’ve been nibbling when we should have been biting,” Brady said.

“I’m to the point now where we just bite the bullet,” Cothren said.

They added that the board had just dispatched letters to department heads talking about spending cuts and starting the process for developing the 2009 budget.

They declined to discuss the parameters of message, but they said they had set spending targets for each department. They’ll meet with department heads and hold another finance meeting next Tuesday to go over details. Finance meetings are at 8:30 a.m.; the board’s regular meeting starts at 9:30 a.m.