Staff report
County Executive Charlie Dooley has proposed a 2011 county budget that reduces spending by nearly 10 percent from this year.
Dooley last month submitted to the County Council a budget proposal that calls for $486.3 million in expenditures next year — 9.6 percent less than the $537.6 million the county expects to spend in 2010.
No residents spoke during a Nov. 16 public hearing on the proposed budget. The proposed budget calls for $355,352,171 in expenditures across the county’s four general funds — nearly 3 percent less than the $366,078,425 the county expects to spend from those funds in 2010.
Combined with special revenue funds, the total proposed 2011 operating budget is $423.9 million — roughly 10 percent less than the $473.2 budgeted for 2010.
Dooley wrote in his budget message that the county’s property tax rate next year would remain at 52.3 cents per $100 of assessed valuation under his proposal.
No layoffs, furloughs or pay cuts are budgeted for 2011, but county employees’ salaries would be frozen for the third year in a row, and some positions would be eliminated through attrition, the county executive wrote.
“We are faced with the continuing challenge of finding a way to maintain sufficient levels of service with fewer employees and less funding,” he wrote. “In order for us to successfully meet this challenge, it requires the ongoing support of our committed and dedicated county employees who have been asked to do more with less and yet continue to provide quality services to the residents of St. Louis County.”
The proposed budget includes $2 million to begin designing a new health center in north county and $5.8 million for a new animal shelter in Olivette that will consolidate the two existing county shelters in north county and Ladue.
A $1.6 million, or roughly 4-percent, decrease is projected in the Public Mass Transit Fund in 2011 because of decreased collections from the quarter-cent transportation sales tax, Dooley wrote.
Funds from that sales tax go to the Metro transit agency.
“This budget does not recommend appropriations for the new half-cent sales tax implemented earlier this year,” Dooley stated, referring to Proposition A, which voters approved in April for the transit agency. “These funds will be appropriated upon your (council) approval of the annual contract with Metro which they will submit for consideration during the first half of 2011.”
The proposed budget forecasts 2011 revenues of roughly $604 million — an increase of roughly $40 million, or about 7 percent, over the roughly $564 million in projected 2010 revenues.
The county received revenues totaling roughly $513 million in 2009.
Dooley wrote that 2011 revenues are projected to increase because moneys from the new River City Casino in Lemay and new sales taxes will be collected in full beginning next year.
