It is true that the board choose to maintain a rosy budget picture until after the 2008 election, so as to avoid having to make painful cuts or to create controversy with the Unions.

Jeff…while I agree that the County has taken steps to consolidate services and departments, these have largely been reactionary. And, the departments were created with very little consideration of fiscal impact and outcomes to county residents. The County has a nearly brand new building that is largely empty, because of the lack of planning and foresight. The building will become a drain on county resources and provide very little in return. This is at a time when the County should be prioritizing its needs, and funding them particularly the Washtenaw Health Plan and mortgage foreclosure crisis intervention. Also…the County took over the Community Development office, not because it made sense fiscally for the County, but because the City of Ann Arbor, which has been forced to cut their budget, needed them too.

The County Manager hired the administrators including Mr. Burger that have made costly mistakes and poorly managed the departments. (Wireless Washtenaw?) Though, I understand that Mr. Guenzel is beyond reproach among the County insiders. He also allows some of the key departments to be run like personal fiefdoms most notably ETCS.

So…while I don’t blame you for the downturn, if past performance is an indicator of future behavior, I have very little confidence that the leadership exists on the Board to make the tough decisions that will help County residents through this mess.

I, too am very sad about excellent programs being at risk, and we are hoping that we can retain the most vital services for our citizens. Thank you for your good wishes, Vivienne. Having been there, you know it is not an easy task.

Best wishes to the current BOC. I’m glad I don’t have to make the decisions you do. I’m very sad about the excellent programs being lost.

(All that said, I was concerned by the overly optimistic projections by the former budget director, who said “the best predictor of the future is the past”. I think the BOC should have taken a more conservative approach to the housing bubble.)

The County is responsible for many state and federal programs. It has been the invisible government to many because it has been responsible for the actual machinery that runs the system, without too much of the drama. I am very concerned about its continued status. How about life without an Environmental Health/Public Health department when we have more West Nile/Swine Flu….future problems? How to deal with our mentally ill population without CSTS? The Treasurer has been doing a sterling job to prevent people from losing their houses through foreclosure.

I hope that county government, and our well-being as a community, will prevail. “Let the cards fall where they may” is not a responsible approach. We need to focus on vital services and consider what will be essential.

The county often goes unnoticed despite the roughly $100 million in local investments we all make through our county government. By leveraging state and federal resources, the county spends roughly twice that amount to fuel our courts, our Sheriff and dozens of lower cost services from recycling programs to Head Start. Indeed, one of the challenges of managing county government is the wide range of services we provide. From mental health services to restaurant inspections, the county performs a diverse and important set of functions for the community.

With that said, I think it is important to let people know that Washtenaw County has been trimming and consolidating certain functions for many years.

We started by focusing on “back office” and administrative functions like IT, HR, facilities and the like. The strategy was twofold. One, since the citizens depend most on direct services, we should cut those last. Two, back office services are the best candidates for consolidation with other local governments. We made a number of significant moves along these lines years ago to prepare for the current downturn. For instance, we eliminated 25% of our IT staff and drastically scaled back technology purchases. We absorbed a number of departments into one “Support Services” department to save on supervision. More recently, we co-located our servers with the City of Ann Arbor and moved to share the cost of network administration staff. Our joint Community Development Office with the City of Ann Arbor is another example of a consolidation that saves administrative costs and therefore pushes more of the resources towards service delivery.

To set the record straight, our workforce at the county has worked with the citizens to accomplish all of this. In the recent past, the unions have taken concessions on health care. The unions have also agreed to contribute more to their retirement costs. In our current contracts, most of the unions agreed to a three year deal with 0%, 0% and 3% wage adjustments over the years 2007-2010.

This contract, with two years of no across the board wage increases for the county workforce, was a very significant way for the union to step up to the hard times we all knew were coming. However, I admit that the magnitude of the decline in property values took me by surprise. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know it would be so drastic and so prolonged.

Now, we face 2010 with a planned wage increase of 3% and the typical skyrocketing costs for health care and retirement obligations. Coupled with the continued recession, this means trouble for the community – especially those who rely on the county for services.

It isn’t that the unions have made no concessions or that the Board of Commissioners has spent the last years on a spending spree. The reality is much more troubling. We have all been trying to make this county government work for the community – together.

It is my sincere hope that this partnership between the Board of Commissioners and our workforce can continue and that we will all place the citizens first when we look towards the coming years. The Board and the employees all serve the public and we hope to do it well.

I don’t disagree with you regarding 2007, but they did know that the economy had started to go south. They had put in place a hiring freeze in the fourth quarter of 07 just as they were approving the Union contract.

They also were well aware of the closure of Pfizer and the beginnings of the mortgage foreclosure crisis. Despite that, they still continued to projected modest revenue growth through this year. Now I don’t blame Bob Guenzel or the Board for the economic situation, there was enough information available and other counties were already taking steps to prepare for the crisis.

The Board, with a nice assist from the County Manager, delayed action on the budget until after the 08 election. It was very convenient and speaks to the lack of leadership at the County.