Park County commissioners review multiyear budget scenarios, reserve goals and COLA choices

Park County commissioners spent their May 28 workshop reviewing multiyear budget scenarios that show how inflation, personnel costs and selected department allocations would affect the county’s general‑fund reserves.

Erica, the county finance presenter, said the FY26 baseline used for modelling was “about 160,000 in reserves,” and walked commissioners through four scenarios: a 2.97% operations inflation assumption (a recent multi‑year average), a 4.2% forecast for 2027, an extreme 15% stress case and a model that layers a periodic COLA for personnel. “The commission has decided that our policy is trying to get our reserves to 17%,” Erica said, and staff ran the scenarios to show how long it would take to reach that target under different spending and revenue assumptions.

Why it matters: the models show that holding FY26 allocations flat would speed reserve growth, but increasing personnel costs or experiencing higher operations inflation can push reserves down. Erica cautioned that some revenue lines — notably federal payments and certain program fees — are volatile. She told the group the EBS/federal payments series had averaged about a $92,000 (6.16%) increase over the past decade but “that chart jumps all over,” meaning the county should not assume steady growth.

Commissioners and department representatives pressed staff on practical limits: some service fees are set by the state and cannot be raised locally, which constrains departments such as the clerk of district court from using fee increases to meet a higher reserve goal. A district court representative noted in chat that the office has “nothing to cut” because fees are statutorily set.

Several commissioners raised personnel retention concerns. One commissioner said, “I just don’t know how we can move forward if we don’t prioritize people…we can’t afford to lose anybody,” arguing that a market‑competitive COLA or targeted pay adjustments might be necessary to retain critical staff such as sanitarians. Staff proposed running additional scenarios that separate a 2% COLA from targeted wage adjustments so the commission can see tradeoffs between keeping everyone and paying market rates for a smaller set of positions.

On contingency planning, a staff member recommended building a 10% contingency over time so departments have flexibility for unexpected costs; that remains a discussion item rather than a decided policy. Commissioners also discussed vacancy savings, grant timing and whether to reallocate certain subscription or training lines (Granicus, Office 365, training) between departments.

Next steps: commissioners asked finance staff and department heads to provide more granular worksheets and recommended a focused follow‑up work session so elected officials and department leaders can participate. Staff scheduled a budget work session to be held in the coming week and flagged deadlines: preliminary department budgets remain due to finance on the timetable (next Thursday).

No formal votes on budget policy were recorded during the workshop; the meeting concluded after a brief public comment and a motion to adjourn.