As Navajo County looks for ways to offset anticipated budget shortfalls, facility consolidations and position reductions were presented to the Navajo County Board of Supervisors April 11 by Assistant County Manager Bryan Layton.
Layton informed the board that there will be a savings totaling $252,167 in part as a result of closing the county’s Pine Lake Facility in Pinetop-Lakeside and moving the services housed there to facilities managed by local partners.
There will also be a repurposing of the Frontier Conference Room at the White Mountain Government County Complex on North Ninth Place in Show Low. This building will become the central access point for services in southern Navajo County.
The building currently holds public health offices, the WIA (Workforce Investment Act) offices, Assistant County Manager Paul Watson’s office and the Animal Control office, along with a large conference room. That room will be converted into office space to house the south county offices of the assessor, public defender, legal defender and county schools superintendent.
Layton noted that a centralized receptionist area will be added, with the employees cross-trained to provide information for each department in the facility. He said the change will result in the elimination of two positions through attrition for a savings of $96,648.
“We have committed ourselves to being more efficient in the way we operate as a government,” Layton said. “This is a great opportunity to leverage staff and resources from several different departments together to reduce costs and also provide a higher level of customer service.”
Other savings will come with the restructuring of positions within Emergency Management that will allow for a portion of the salaries to be funded under a grant, producing a cost savings of $79,299.
In addition, Assistant Manager Paul Watson, who already oversees economic development, will also be taking on workforce development, providing a savings of $76,220 through attrition.
Layton also provided an update on recent sales tax revenue reports, which showed that county sales taxes revenues continue to fall below what was projected by 2.65 percent. State shared is still in the positive at .37 percent “We’re still trending over $100,000 down in sales tax,” explained Layton.
The $252,167 savings from the consolidation, combined with the $800,000 anticipated by the closure of Child Support Services and Juvenile Detention creates a savings of just over $1 million, but the overall shortfall is anticipated to be much greater. In addition to the loss of $1.2 million in property taxes projected with the closures at the Kayenta coal mine and the reductions in infrastructure at Cholla Power Plant, the county is facing a $558,000 increase in the Elected Officials Retirement Plan and just approved a three-year Microsoft contract totaling $207,318.
Layton also noted at an earlier meeting that the county is faced with an aging fleet and equipment, stating, “The average age of our vehicle fleet is 11 to 13 years old, and for heavy equipment, the average age is 19 years.”
Those costs combined means that county officials will still need to find approximately $1 million more in cuts in by next month in order to balance the budget.
