Hunter Taylor: Budget process ‘bizarre,’ ‘lacking in transparency’

LACONIA — Officials will consider how to keep the Belknap County Nursing Home running on a tight budget, as well as pay for the new county jail and other functions when they meet Monday.

Belknap County Commissioner Hunter Taylor (R-Alton), in a letter  published in today’s Laconia Daily Sun, said the  delegation’s approach to the budget process “has been bizarre and completely lacking in transparency.”

He said it appears that the Sylvia budget is simply a lead-in to a  $28.1 million budget that will be billed as a compromise by its supporters.

“If this, indeed, occurs, then what we will have is a new budget introduced for the first time on Jan. 29, with no opportunity for the commissioners, the department heads, or the public to review it in advance. Contrast that with the deliberative and transparent approach to the budget on the part of the commissioners and contrast it with the careful line-by-line public review of the budget conducted by the Belknap delegation up to last year,” Taylor wrote.

He said it will amount to a cut of about $900,000 in the budget proposed by commissioners and it will result in “a long, hot summer” with another round of supplemental budget requests facing the county.

Rep. Michael Sylvia (R-Belmont) has offered an alternative to the  $29,055,233 budget proposed by the Belknap County Commissioners.

The spending total for Sylvia’s plan is $27,129,560, which would amount to about $240,000 more than  the $26.8 million he says was spent last year. It is $1,825,653 less than the budget proposed by the commissioners.

His proposal would reduce the Belknap County Department of Corrections budget to $3,816,443, which he says is $23,211 less than spent last year and more than $735,000 less than proposed by the commissioners.

It would reduce the Belknap County Nursing Home budget to $10,954,431, which Sylvia says is $399,817 less than it spent in 2017 and $672,000 less than the $11,626,847 proposed by the commission.

The Sheriff’s Department budget, under Sylvia’s proposal, would be $47,000 higher than the $2,084,602 spent last year but  $233,000 less than the $2,328,160 proposed by the commission.

The County Attorney’s office would receive about $15,000 more than spent last year, but the $800,000 proposed by Sylvia is $119,180 less than proposed by the commission.

Belknap County Commissioners met Thursday afternoon with county department heads to discuss the impact of the proposed cuts on their departments. Commissioners plan to present the information to the delegation when it meets at 7 p.m. at the Belknap County Complex.