Chris Robinson was on the Summit County Council when they had to deal with impacts of the Great Recession, over a decade ago.
This week, he and colleagues on the current Council took their first step to deal with the budget impacts of the coronavirus lockdown. The Council anticipates the next steps are going to be more difficult.
The Council on Wednesday approved cuts of nearly $3 million to the county’s 2020 budget. Robinson said their actions dealt with the so-called “low-hanging fruit”, such as a hiring freeze and not making a contribution this year to their fund balance.
At the same time, one change has many county employees seeing their Merit pay delayed until the end of the year.
“I would hope that most people realize that we’re all in this together, and that it’s not business as usual, and that we need to make adjustments.”
He said what happens next could depend on decisions from the Utah Legislature’s special session. Summit County is asking if they can take what Robinson calls their “silo funds”—sales taxes for tourism or transit—and allocate those with more flexibility.
“We might have dedicated hospitality taxes, or dedicated transportation or transit taxes, where promoting tourism or taking the next steps on transportation may not be in the critical path. And so I think that knowing what tools we have before we start doing surgery might be helpful.”
The Council on Wednesday briefly mentioned its tax stability fund, the “rainy-day” fund. In order to dip into that money, the Council would have to pass a resolution by August to put it on the November ballot and get voter approval. However, Robinson said there’s little talk about that now.
“I’ve been down this road once before, as you remember, years ago. We haven’t really spent any more time on it than what you heard in yesterday’s session. I think we got a lot of time to decide between now and August whether or not we need to do that. Obviously the tax stability fund is there for a reason, but we don’t really know where we are yet. And we don’t know what these other tools might look like that we may get from the Legislature.”
The Council made a more routine decision in this week’s meeting, as they re-appointed Thomas Cooke, Joel Fine and Canice Harte to the Snyderville Planning Commission.
Robinson supported keeping the three men on the job, now that they’re more seasoned.
“It takes a year or two just to become really a contributor on the Planning Commission as detailed and complex as ours. Those three you mentioned have done well, and they have matured in their positions. We think they are doing a good job, and don’t think it prudent to switch horses when they’ve now really gotten used to the harness and they’re pulling it well.”
Summit County Council Member Chris Robinson
