{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Fiscal review provides details on revenue decrease","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":390,"description":"April 21, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors went over budget priorities in a preliminary fiscal review this week, where they learned details about the projected deficit and discussed belt-tightening measures. Interim CEO Darcie Antle summarized the most significant projected shortfalls, saying non-departmental revenue had had to be cut three percent, or $4.3 million, to meet the revenue projections for 2022-23. The health plan deficit is $5.7 million, not including the $2.5 million that have been incurred but not reported. “And as you know, there has been a decrease in cannabis tax revenue,” Antle remarked.\r\nThe county got a significant cushion last year from ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act, a nearly $17 million grant intended to aid those most hard-hit by the pandemic. \r\nInstead, the board agreed last year to consider using ten million dollars of the grant to provide county core services and infrastructure, with $1.7 million of it to hire new staff, in the hopes of increasing staff to pre-covid levels. Almost one and a half million has already been allocated to vaguely defined support for public health covid response, and another $1.1 million to address negative economic impacts. The fiscal team suggested using further ARPA funds to alleviate the health plan deficit.\r\nSupervisor John Haschak expressed some misgivings, saying, “The original intent of the ARPA money was to have real community input into the process. And it doesn’t sit well with me that we haven’t done any community outreach with the ARPA funds and how they're going to be spent. Obviously we’re in a time when we need to fix our budget. But I think we should have been doing community outreach and seeing how the community wanted to use this. Because it was meant for covid relief.”\r\nDeputy CEO Tim Hallman painted an overall picture that was not encouraging. Actual year-over-year revenues are down, he said. “From last year to this year, just in the budgeting alone, we’re looking at a $1.4 million...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}