Livingston budget tight

• By BOB ANDERSON
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Dec 1, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

Livingston Parish’s proposed 2009 budget leaves little wiggle room and a few question marks, Parish President Mike Grimmer said.

In the coming year, the administration expects to take in only $23,186 more than the total it plans to spend or transfer out of the general fund, according to the proposed budget.

That would leave the general fund with $1.1 million compared with the $3.2 million balance projected last year at this time, when the Parish Council approved its 2008 budget.

The only reason the general fund will be in the black, Grimmer said, is that the council chairman asked the administration to move an estimated $16 million in hurricane cleanup costs out of the general fund and into the separate fund for the Office of Emergency Preparedness.

The parish will incur the hurricane cleanup costs next year when it has to pay contractors. An earlier draft of the 2009 budget showed the general fund ending up in the red.

The latest draft, which will go to a public hearing next month, shows the OEP fund starting  the year $15.4 million in the red. The space for the ending balance of that fund is blank.

That’s because “we don’t know yet what the final numbers will be” for the cost of debris pickup and reimbursement by the federal government, Grimmer said

Grimmer said he expects to see the parish reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for most — but not all — of that fund.

That picture improved last week, when federal officials agreed to reimburse local governments 90 percent of the debris-removal cost instead of 75 percent. In fact, Grimmer said he expects Livingston Parish to get 95 percent reimbursement since it was involved in a pilot project that had a debris management plan in place.

Still, that and a lot of other numbers in the 2009 budget are uncertain, Grimmer said.

“In any budget there are a lot of assumptions,” he says.

Not only did the 2008 budget get an unexpected punch from Hurricane Gustav, but it also got hit with an unbudgeted $400,000 in expenditures from a spring storm that roared through the parish, Grimmer says.

One of the big question marks for parish government finances continues to be the jail and the cost of housing prisoners in jails outside the parish, he says.