PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County is likely to close Irondale Community Park and stop maintenance and water for HJ Carroll Park, turning the fields of the “crown jewel” of county parks brown by next summer, if a proposed 2013 budget is approved.
The recommended budget also calls for cutting employees in the Department of Community Development to a 32-hour workweek, with the office closed on Fridays.
The three Jefferson County commissioners will conduct a public hearing on the 2013 budget at 10 a.m. today in their chambers at the Jefferson County Courthouse at 1820 Jefferson St., in Port Townsend and are expected to consider approval of the budget at their Dec. 17 regular meeting.
The proposed 2013 county budget is $53,399,632, with $16,429,325 in the general fund and $36,970,307 in its 54 other funds.
“Our county parks and recreation program is facing a crisis,” County Administrator Philip Morley said in his memo to the commissioners.
“That crisis is here and now,” he said.
Morley said in his memo that the recommended 2013 general fund budget continues a strategy begun in 2009 to hold general fund expenditures essentially flat despite escalating costs of services.
“Transfers have been flat or reduced for five years in a row,” Morley wrote.
“This has required continued service level reductions by each department, and the cumulative impact of this reduction is now alarming.”
Irrigation and maintenance for HJ Carroll Park at 9884 Rhody Drive in Chimacum, “which has been the crown jewel of the county’s park system,” will be cut, Morley said in his memo.
Without water, the playing fields will go from turf to dirt by next summer.
“When you don’t water a lawn, it doesn’t have to be mowed, so we save there,” Morley said.
“But the citizens will see a real decline in quality with those fields, which are used for team sports.”
Morley said volunteer labor can help in some situations but not in this case, since “volunteers don’t pay for water.”
The five-acre Irondale Community Park at 61 Alma St., in Port Hadlock will be closed, he said.
“Our county parks system has been on life support since November of 2009, when we laid off staff, closed facilities and turned to the community to keep most of our parks running,” Morley said in his memo.
The Adopt-A-Park program drew 74 volunteers who have donated “thousands of hours in labor” to keep nine day-use parks and two campgrounds open, he said.
“But in 2013, even this fragile bridge is falling apart,” Morley said, adding that more cuts are likely in 2014 and each following year.
“We are relying on our citizens to maintain our parks but they are still degrading,” Morley said.
Memorial Field and the Port Townsend Recreation Center would have been closed already but for a reprieve through an agreement with the city of Port Townsend for half of its annual revenue — estimated at $212,000 — from a sales tax hike voters approved in 2010 to go to those two facilities.
“In two years, that city funding for the Rec Center and Memorial Field will run out, and the county has no way to fund their continued operation. . .” Morley said.
He said the county is bound by its commitment to support Memorial Field and the recreation center even as sales tax revenues fail to meet projections.
According to the budget, this represents $26,000 for 2013, which will allow the county to make its $646,000 commitment.
“I want to emphasize how important it was when the public did step forward to save a number of programs from being cut,” Morley said.
“We’ve had to backfill the shortfall from our projections and this has an impact on our ability to fund county programs but the public stepped forward and said these are important programs and we want them to be funded.
“We are trying to honor the deal we made with the public.”
The 2013 budget reflects a continuing decline of government’s abilities to provide services, which isn’t likely to change in the foreseeable future, Morley said.
“The county, like many other jurisdictions, has been faced with twin pressures . . .” Morley said.
“One is the Great Recession that has reduced many of our revenue streams.
“At the same time, we have a continuing erosion of our property tax base since it grows at most at 1 percent a year,” Morley said.
“The only thing that adds to that is new construction,” he said.
“That gives a bump to the property tax, but we are lower in terms of new construction than any year since 1998.”
Add inflation and the county can never catch up and must continue to cut services, Morley said.
Given declining levels of new construction, DCD hours will be cut back 20 percent and the office will be closed on Friday to save costs.
“With the shorter hours for DCD, the services that department will suffer since they will need to complete their work week in 80 percent of their time,” Morley said.
The budget will see a net reduction of slightly more than 10 full-time equivalents, from 279.5 budgeted in 2012 to 269.42 in 2013, Morley said.
Most are because the JeffCom911 Communications became a separate agency in October.
“Not including JeffCom, Jefferson County’s 2013 budget shows a reduction of 27.2 FTEs from budgeted 2008,” Morley said.
While the city of Port Townsend was pushed toward crisis because of the miscoding of $200,000 in sales tax, that money being reallocated to the county saved some programs.
“That saved our bacon,” Morley said of the error’s correction.
“If that hadn’t been corrected we would have been in real hurt.”
Details of the recommended county budget can be found at www.co.jefferson.wa.us.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
