Delaware County Council is exhibiting classic symptoms of psychological denial: “a defense mechanism in which the existence of unpleasant external realities is kept out of conscious awareness.”
The unpleasant reality is that the county’s main source of paying bills, the general fund, does not have enough money to get through the end of this year and still have enough left over to start next year.
Somebody thinks the problem is simple “cash flow”: Therefore, let’s borrow to pay bills today and pay back tomorrow.
Council partly borrowed some money last week to do this, and started the wheels in motion to borrow more — lots more.
Or at least members called the move “borrowing,” as they went back for the third time this year to the rainy say fund, tapping $1.4 million and virtually wiping it out in order to make payroll and pay bills the next few weeks.
In reality (unless you’re “in denial”), don’t look for that loan to ever be paid back.
On top of this action, council approved starting the process, estimated to take 30-45 days, to obtain a line of credit of up to $4 million to pay bills for the rest of the year. In December, when the final property tax draw comes into county coffers, the loan gets repaid.
Time was when “tax anticipation warrants” to let a county financially get through to a June or December tax draw was not uncommon. In large part, though, that was when council routinely had increased the next year’s annual budget, hence needing more money, and had raised taxes to pay, hence bringing in more tax revenue.
With property tax caps set in stone, the system no longer works, something else a lot of officials appear to deny. Somebody probably will do so, though they should be prosecuted on charges of maintaining a common nuisance.
Or at least accused of “enabling,” that is, helping someone hooked on an abusive behavior continue their addictive habits.
The county started this year with just under $4 million in the general fund balance, and at this point, we burned through that along with millions more from the rainy day fund.
Republican council member Ron Quakenbush told his colleagues he’s been running through figures and that the general fund in 2006 stood at $28.2 million. This year, the figure is $25.3, nearly $3 million less.
“I’d like to make one more point,” he added, “We cut about $1 million in salaries out of the budget, but over the period of six years, we added $939,470 to other budgets.”
...
See the full article here:
http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013303310031
