Residents blast county tax hike plan

By BRIAN WALKER

Staff Writer

COEUR d'ALENE — Even after an emotional three-hour public hearing on Kootenai County's proposed budget Thursday night, it's still unclear where the property tax hike will land.

Commissioners didn't finalize the budget so another meeting will be slated for next week on a day to be determined to allow the Clerk's Office to recalculate the numbers based on the board's budget-trimming recommendation.

During the public hearing attended by roughly 70 people, several residents urged the commissioners to trim the budget to eliminate the proposed 1.5 percent property tax proposal.

"When is it going to stop?" Rathdrum's Tim Kastning said, adding residents have also faced recent tax hikes at multiple levels of government. "It can't go on. We elected you as fiscal conservatives. Please stop taxing us."

A heated exchange ensued between Commissioners Marc Eberlein and Bob Bingham when they attempted to trim the $88.05 million budget to avoid the tax increase.

Eberlein offered $773,000 worth of cut suggestions that would have more than eliminated the tax hike.

Those included, but were not limited to, $161,000 from two sheriff's office positions for the jail expansion due to a reorganization of the department, $360,000 from a salary increase pool, $137,000 for a new mapping system and reducing the contributions to Jobs Plus by $28,000 and Heritage Health by $15,000.

"I'm opposed to this budget and I think we can do better," Eberlein said.

Neither Bingham nor Chris Fillios originally agreed to any of Eberlein's cut proposals, so Bingham said his slicing idea was to cut he and Eberlein's salaries in half since Fillios agreed with the budget as proposed.

"Right now we're eight months behind on projects; if you think I'm going to work for $35,000, forget it," said Eberlein, adding that he's partially responsible for 750 employees and an $88 million budget and local CEOs make well above $120,000.

Ultimately, with most still people in attendance but their patience obviously waning, the three only only came to a consensus of the two sheriff's positions being trimmed. And that was only after Sheriff Ben Wolfinger took the podium to say his department would be OK with that to open the jail expansion.

Clerk Jim Brannon said the county has five days to recalculate the budget.

"We're not going to recalculate the numbers on the fly this evening," he said, essentially finally ending the meeting.

Several people spoke in favor of the Kootenai County Fairgrounds receiving $175,000 as proposed in the budget, an increase of $75,000 from the current year. The funding was left in the budget.

"There's safety issues with infrastructure that we need to tackle," said Alexcia Jordan, the fair manager.

The budget includes merit salary increases of up to 3 percent for most county employees.

Not including staff for the jail expansion, four new full-time positions county positions are planned. Those include an accounting technician in district court, a driver's license examiner for the new Post Falls office, an airport operations specialist and a bailiff. A half-time position in grants management is also planned.

The total amount budgeted for the new positions, including benefits, is $242,345.

The county was able to avoid an employee insurance increase since it change consultants.

Fillios said he agreed with the budget as proposed because growth has led to an increase in demand for services.

Bingham said about $12 million was trimmed from department requests from the beginning of the six-month budget discussion process.

"I'm frustrated that I don't have more time to dive into more detail," he said of the budget-trimming process. "You never find enough time to accomplish everything you want to do."

- In other business, the board unanimously approved the Kootenai County Emergency Medical Services budget of $8.26 million and the Aquifer Protection District's budget of $497,778 with little discussion on each.