The chief responsibility of any county council is to manage the fiscal affairs of county government. It cannot be a council’s second or third priority; it must be our top priority.
With that said, the certainty here in Porter County is that our county government is incapable of taking on additional operational expenses without the support of a new revenue source.
At present, we are already using reserve funds to balance our books. Some might not see this as a problem, but in reality it is tantamount to raiding the family savings to help pay the monthly grocery bill.
County officials are already aware we must significantly increase the medical staffing in the county jail or risk a federal mandate forcing us to do so — and likely with an open checkbook. Moreover, we have not identified where this money is coming from, long term or short term.
Likewise, we must find at least an additional $2 million annually to address the costs of consolidating our police, fire and ambulance dispatching system. Currently, this shortfall is being addressed with reserve funds that are projected to dissolve sometime next year.
We were told only last year by an outside independent accounting firm that more than any other county of our comparable size in Indiana, Porter relies too heavily on property taxes to fund its day-to-day operations.
Now consider that Porter County is the only county that doesn’t appropriate at least a fixed percentage of its collected income taxes each year to help fund its budget. Meanwhile, over the last 10 years county government has collected annually about $4.8 million a year in income tax revenue. To date, that’s more than $48 million.
...
