From the Goshen News:
Elkhart County Council members Saturday received some sobering news regarding the county’s 2014 budget and the significant shortfalls that will likely be facing the county for at least the foreseeable future.
According to Elkhart County Commissioner Mike Yoder, when looking forward to next year’s budget, the county’s ability over the past year to shrink its already hefty shortfall has been significantly less than he had hoped.
“The problem is, from my perspective — looking at next year what we’re going to do — my expectations and hopes for this year was that we would be shrinking this shortfall in a little greater degree than what we did,” Yoder said. “And we did not.”
With that in mind, Yoder noted that the next question that has to be asked is whether the county can grow its way out of this current situation of funding shortfalls, and if so how many years will it take?
“The reason this is important is because we are going to probably deplete all of our reserves next year,” Yoder said. “So in 2015, I see we have a problem. Number one we have no more reserves, we have a continued shortfall in revenues — it’s going to be in the millions — and we’re going to have increasing costs.”
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http://goshennews.com/local/x865779591/County-Council-told-deficit-will-likely-continue/print
