Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Budget Funding Sources topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee discusses shifting restricted funds, inmate‑services revenue and fee cuts as partial offsets to a tax increase
Summary
Commissioners considered using inmate‑services revenue for a reentry specialist, applying opioid‑settlement funds for jail behavioral health staff, reducing a corporate/corridor preservation fee (estimated ~$3M), and reallocating capital to operations to lower proposed tax increases.
During Oct. 27 deliberations, commissioners and staff identified several funding alternatives to blunt the size of a property‑tax increase.
Scott Park explained that the inmate services fund — the profits from commissary sales and inmate phone charges — can be used, under current policy, to pay an inmate reentry specialist. That option would avoid tapping the general fund or opioid settlement dollars for that position. Park also described a request from Davis Behavioral Health for additional jail staffing; commissioners discussed preferring to use opioid or other restricted treatment funds rather than general‑fund revenue where legally permissible.
Commissioners discussed a corporate/corridor preservation fee that raised about $3 million; several said they support eliminating or reducing it and directed staff to explore the legal and timing requirements for doing so. Park and commissioners noted that fee changes may require state or ordinance steps and that some uses of fee revenue are legally restricted.
Other levers discussed included deferring or scaling back capital projects (for example reducing a $1.8 million Western Sports Park capital allocation to operations in one scenario) and postponing a large design/fit‑out for crime‑lab space until after the budget cycle.
No formal changes to fee or fund allocations were adopted at the meeting. Commissioners asked to have these options included as scenarios in the tentative budget material and discussed communicating the net household impact (monthly dollar changes) at public open houses.
