Editorial: Westmoreland County needs to rein in spending
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The Westmoreland County commissioners have a preliminary budget on the table. The proposed $365.5 million spending plan for 2022 does not raise property taxes above the 21.49 mills where they stand now.
That can be a good thing.
What isn’t? A disturbing trend of spending money the county isn’t making.
The county’s revenue will fall about $10.5 million short of its expenses, something that has been going on for at least 10 years. Instead, the county will make up the rest out of what is projected to be a $17 million surplus at the end of 2021.
To put that in household terms, the county is paying its bills not by living within its paycheck but by dipping into the savings account.
This is a mixed message for the taxpayers.
On one hand, no one wants to pay more in taxes, and the county commissioners absolutely should strive to keep spending as low as possible so as not to overburden the property owners.
On the other, how long can the commissioners expect to live off a budget surplus that will dry up eventually? The unfortunate thing about a savings account is that unless you have billionaire Jeff Bezos’ money, it is not going to be limitless.
The good news is the commissioners expect to trim more before final approval in December.
“This is when we will really dig in and go through it line by line. We have not done that yet. That is when we will do the real work,” Commissioner Gina Cerilli Thrasher said.
Between preliminary budget in November 2020 and final approval in December 2020, the 2021 spending plan was trimmed from $345 million to $339.7 million, a savings of $5.3 million dollars.
If a similar amount is able to be cut from the 2022 budget, it still will be almost $5 million short and have to pull out nearly one-third of the surplus to cover it.
By the time a budget gets preliminary approval, much of the wrestling with what is urgent and what can wait already has been done. The closer you get to the end of the calendar, the harder those cuts get to make because the simple decisions already have been excised.
Maybe the commissioners could make a resolution for 2022 to not only keep taxes low but also stay out of the red.