I spent some time today looking over line by line at the County Commissioner’s (department) budget request for FY2011 (PDF).  The department consists of and Administrative Assistant, Executive Office Administrator,  and the 5 elected County Commissioners.

Assuming all 5 Commissioner’s receive the same salary, the county is spending about $30,000 per Commissioner, for a total of $150,000. A lot of the other line items on this budget request are related to standard FTE costs such as health insurance for the salaried staff.

Supplies expenses for the year are being cut down by $2,000. Because the budget requests are rather vague in its line-item descriptions, I’m not sure if this is an aggressive cut, or a rather soft one.

More after the link…

The Commissioner’s department should consider cutting travel costs substantially further. The budget request lists $18,900 in costs for the year. I can see the commissioner’s getting reimbursed for expenses related to traveling to Annapolis and for driving costs for getting around the county, but I’m not sure that sort of travel ads up to this much in one year. I certainly hope our commissioner’s are not traveling any further distances on the Cecil County taxpayer’s dime.

Related, the Commissioners should look at their Training and Education budget of $1,500 and consider eliminating it completely for fiscal year 2011. I am a believer in the value and importance of professional development and training,  but during a bad economy, this is the first thing that gets cut completely for most businesses.

I work for a large Fortune 500, and have not received any sort of paid training or had any sort of paid travel costs reimbursement during the last 2 years.

One suggestion the Commissioner’s can consider is making use of Skype for free video conferencing, as well other web-based meeting software to eliminate travel costs. Additionally, training for staff members for the next few years should be limited to free webinars.

Every small amount counts.

Total Suggested cuts: $20,400