FROM THE EDITOR: Running out of county services, employees to cut

County officials are back to overturning the metaphorical couch cushion to find any spare dollar they can to bridge a budget gap with a filing deadline looming.

Right now, every dollar counts.

On one side of the ledger, the county has $32.3 million in planned expenses. On the other side of the ledger is $30.8 million. As a husband who has his wife handle the family finances, I’m not the best with numbers. But I do know you can’t budget more than you have. That sucker needs to balance, and as you read this, the county is $1.49 million away from balancing.

Did I mention the fiscal 2016 budget is due in Carson City 10 days from today?

The county is in this 11th-hour jam because two potential revenue streams the county thought they would have in hand got pulled away. Reminds me of the insurance commercial where the guy has a dollar on the fishing line he pulls away from the woman at the last second.

Both may materialize, but it will be after the fiscal year starts so it can’t be put on the ledger right now.

One is from a state audit of Round Mountain Gold the county manager’s office believed would bring the county $1.3 million.

However, like any business would, the gold company is appealing the state’s finding. While the county may get something in the long run, it could be less than before and it could be more than a year away.

The second is a potential service contract through the Nye County Sheriff’s Office that could generate as much as $3 million per year. While the details of what the service contract would be have not been made public, I can tell you what they won’t be, ticket cameras.

As soon as we posted a story about this potential revenue stream earlier this month, readers to the pvtimes.com website were sure the revenue was going to come from ticket cameras. Rest assured, that’s not the plan.

Some of the ideas to be reviewed by the county staff before returning to a special County Commission meeting May 29 will be deeper cuts to services, a true hiring freeze and a 4.62 percent budget reduction by departments which could include job cuts.

There are compelling arguments against each, but the county is up against the wall.

Deeper cuts to services could include $65,000 to veterans services, $150,000 to administrative costs, $528,000 to emergency management and $338,000 to animal control. All these moves would for all intended purposes kill these programs. Do we really want to live in a community with no animal control department?

These cuts are on top of devastating cuts made earlier this year to senior nutrition, animal shelters, planning, Nye County Sheriff’s Office, and other departments cut expenses by $1.5 million. Another $662,000 was cut from the juvenile probation office, agriculture extension and the Amargosa Valley and Beatty health clinic.

Both those communities have been holding town halls trying to find a way to bridge the new gap in the health services.

There have been outcries from various communities about cuts within the county, a county that is 18,000 square miles and the third largest in the lower 48 states by land mass. In Pahrump, residents may feel the cuts here and there. A slower response by the county to get a permit, or get some issue addressed.

But the further you go into the more rural areas of Nye, loss of health clinics and other services can be devastating. They can be a matter of life and death.

There are no easy answers to the financial crisis facing Nye County. Property and sales taxes continue to decline.

How far from the bottom we truly are no one definitively knows, but it seems to be coming fast.

Arnold M. Knightly is the editor of the Pahrump Valley Times