Wednesday, October 30, 2002

Property tax, jail revenue could help county

Bruce Warren News-Bulletin Staff Writer; bwarren@news-bulletin.com

Los Lunas County commissioners would definitely like to give 39 county employees the Christmas present of returning to 40-hour work weeks, but that return depends on two key factors.

During the past two months, the county received $114,562 for housing Bernalillo County inmates detained at the Valencia County Detention Center. However, with the new Bernalillo County jail completed, those funds will no longer be available, as Valencia County's contract to house Bernalillo County inmates expires on Nov. 24, leaving the county to find an alternative form of income.

The second factor that would allow county employees to return to full work weeks depends on the amount of revenue the county receives from property tax payments, the majority coming from mortgage companies, according to County Manager James Fernández, who pointed out that the last property tax distribution date is Dec. 31.

"All of this (getting employees back on 40 hours) is premised on us getting revenue from the jail facility," Fernández told commissioners Tuesday in a county workshop that reviewed the first quarter of the 2002-03 fiscal budget.

Senior Warden Lawrence Barreras of Cornell Companies Inc., which operates the county's detention center, said he feels that his company will have no problem keeping all 194 beds at the county detention facility occupied.

"I talked to the state, and they wanted to put 140 inmates at our facility, but we don't have 140 beds," Barreras said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

"Every marketable bed is full, and we got a recent call from Bernalillo (County) to take 40 more inmates, but we just don't have space," Barreras said.

Fernández received a letter from Barreras on Oct. 28, prior to Tuesday's budget review, that outlines possible revenue sources to replace funds received from housing Bernalillo inmates.

In the letter, Barreras wrote that he has already met with Manager Dale Morrison of the Taos County jail, who "requested that a contract to provide inmate-housing services be drafted and submitted to them as soon as possible so that they may process the contract through their commission at the Nov. 14, 2002, meeting."

Another form of revenue for Cornell and the county may come through the U.S. Marshal's intergovernmental contract, which has been completed and is ready for the county to review, according to Barreras.

"I think it's very important that James looks into this U.S. Marshal's intergovernmental contract that Cornell is working on," Commissioner Gary Daves said Tuesday during the budget workshop.

Fernández and Daves both cautioned the commission about putting employees back on full work-weeks prematurely, before anticipated revenue from Cornell and property taxes have been received.

"I want to see how property taxes come in," Fernández said. "We are taking a conservative approach. Right now, we have $330,000 to the good. I would not want to bring the employees back on 40 hours only to tell them three months later that we don't have the money."

By state law, the county is required to maintain a 3/12 cash reserve balance, and that balance might be put in jeopardy if commissioners decided to put employees back on 40 hours now.

"If you were to start right now, you would need $174,425 to bring the employees back to 40 hours," Fernández told the commissioners. "If we did that, this would not meet the 3/12 requirements. Under the existing budget, you would have expenditures greater than revenues."

All of this was part of the budget workshop discussion where no action could be taken. Commissioner Alicia Aguilar suggested that, once the appropriate budgetary changes were made, the budget still needs to be submitted to the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) in Santa Fe.

"Putting it all together, we'll look at the responsible figure and then submit it to the DFA," Aguilar said.

After having to deal with such a large county deficit, Chairman Al Padilla said he felt that Fernández has done an outstanding job in helping to bring the county to the point where it can even consider bringing its employees back to 40 hours.

"I think James deserves a hand for keeping us within budget, and now we can be considering to bring our employees back to 40 hours," Padilla said.

Fernández said he hopes that, by the end of November, he will have a better idea of what budgetary changes can be made in order to bring employees back to full work weeks.

E-mail this story Printer-friendly version