Budget Update
A letter to families and individuals receiving services from the Superintendent, Christina Hurr
January 2012
In January 2011, I sent you information about the economic challenges we were facing. Our concern was, and still is, that we continue to get more individuals who request supports but we have no way to increase our revenues at this time. In fact, our revenues have decreased.
With decreasing revenues, we initiated some ‘big ticket’ changes in order to preserve services. They were: 1) consolidation of our adult day program from three locations into one, 2) our adult day program staff began providing transportation, 3) offering an early retirement incentive as a way to downsize personnel, 4) relocation of our West Chester team from a leased space into the Janet Clemmons Center.
As 2011 ended, we could see our planning begin to pay off. Our expenditures came under budget by $1.0 million. Additionally, local tax revenue collections came out a little ahead of what we expected and we received a settlement from the Federal Government for administering Medicaid services we provided from 2004-2007. Also, while we expected all of our state revenue to be cut, only part of it was reduced.
Although this is good news, we must continue to reduce expenditures as planned so that we can postpone a levy request and still provide our level of services. In 2012 we will: 1) move our administration offices into Janet Clemmons Center, 2) continue to see staff reduction due to retirements and 3) continue to review our contract services and expenditures. The challenges will continue. We are hearing that the state will make more budget cuts in 2012 and if our current trends continue, we will see the number of individuals we support increase and we will see individuals with more complex medical and behavioral health issues.
I want to thank the families and individuals for the sacrifices they have endured as we made the changes in 2011. It is not easy to see long-time staff leave, lose your favorite staff person, move out of one facility and into another or travel farther to meet with your support
coordinator. I also want to thank the staff for their support. They have made transition for individuals easier by planning and by working with individual teams. It is to our Board and management staff’s credit that recently we were noted for implementing multiple best practices in the Ohio Performance Audit of Butler County government and social services. The audit report states, “The Butler County Board of DD utilizes a number of {these} recommended best practices including the preparation of ten-year budget projections, preemptive personnel and service adjustments based on need and projected resources, performance based annual increases, strategic planning and comparative peer salary analysis. The preceding planning practices position the BCBDD to effectively manage upcoming changes in funding and community needs.” The Board has made tough decisions in the short term so as to guarantee services in the future.
Bottom line for 2012: Our operating budget for 2012 will be $29.1 million, same as in 2011. $8.3 million along with $2.4 million is used to draw down Federal Medicaid funds which enables us to provide $32 million in Medicaid service. We will continue to monitor the state budget for further decreases in allocations to us as well as the status of Tangible Personal Property Tax income. If our projections are accurate, we can hold off on asking
for a replacement of our 3 mill levy until 2014 without cutting services, although we will not able to expand services to meet the growing needs beyond what is currently planned for in our budget for 2012.
Sincerely,
Christina Hurr, Superintendent
