Read Greg Sneary's letter to the other Allen County commissioners about the budget

4/21/2009

Dan Reiff and Sam Bassitt,

I have witnessed something I never thought possible, the total breakdown of this office.

We are in the midst of one of the worst economic times in recent history and there is no discussion or action plan in place. I voted against the budget at the first of the year as the cuts made were not enough to sustain the county going forward. I have tried to approach this subject on numerous occasions with no true response in return. I proposed different remedies which could have been considered by reasonable people and like methods have been used by others in similar situations. All of these attempts have all fallen on deaf ears.

We used @$2,000,000 in one time money and made @$1,000,000 in cuts for the 2009 budget. We do not have any more one time money in which to prop up the budget. We are totally exposed going forward. We still have the $2,000,000 shortfall we had at the beginning of the year. In fact, it has grown but I will leave that discussion for another day.

You are placing this county in very serious harm by not addressing these problems. The situation has been made much worse by the unnecessary delays. The financial problem at the beginning of the year was a $166,000/ month. At the end of this month, the financial problem will have grown to $250,000/ month. In two more months it will grow to $333,000/ month and will grow at a much faster rate as we get closer to the end of the year.

To illustrate this fact, the financial problem at end of this month will have increased by more than 50%. For example if we needed to layoff 2 people at the beginning of the year, you now need to lay off 3 people. If you wait until 2 months from now you will need to lay off 4 people. This kind of impact is totally unnecessary and very irresponsible. I am ashamed of the behavior of this office and quite frankly, I am embarrassed by it. At the rate we are going and if it continues, we will have the state declare the county a disaster and take over the county's finances to put it back on solid ground.

There are examples of everyone around us taking significant action to preserve what funds they can to prolong their mission given to them by the ORC. These examples are within our county and many others are outside our county. The County Engineer has a plan with 3 phases in place which he described in some detail yesterday. Many other counties, cities, and villages are dealing directly with their individual financial issues as they should.

We have already nearly exhausted the Capital Fund for the year within 3 ½ months. What happens if we have a disaster of some kind? What will you do then?

You have continued to spend money this year as though there is nothing wrong. You appear to be in complete denial. I truly don't understand your way of thinking and I will continue to vote no on all unnecessary spending. The use of General Fund dollars being spent this year includes $119,000 for the Chamber building which is not even a county facility. You plan to spend all of the $100,000 of General Fund dollars set aside for the potential closure of the VMCCC. It is impossible for anyone to be sure we won't need the $100,000 to mothball the VMCCC if things don't go as well as they plan. Where will the money come from to preserve the facility if you've used all the funds 3 ½ months into the year?

Commissioner is not a spectator sport. If you don't want to participate maybe you should get out of the way and let someone lead who would want to.

Greg Sneary