Local News

Wahkiakum County officials are expecting budget belt tightening some time this year, but for now, theyare not making any changes in the budget course they've charted for 2007.
In a finance committee meeting Tuesday, Treasurer Paula Holloway reported that in the first quarter of 2007, the county had take in about 25 percent of the revenue it budgeted for the year, and it had spent 25 percent of the money it had expected to spend in the year.
The officials--Holloway, Auditor Diane Tischer, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Bigelow and Commissioners George Trott, Dan Cothren and Tom Doumit are concerned that revenues aren't covering all spending needs.
They are holding public forums to gather public input on the future of the Wahkiakum Family Practice Clinic, which is running much higher deficits than expected when the county purchased it almost 2.5 years ago from Peace Health Medical Center (see related story on this page).
"We need to be able to explain that this is county government, not just the clinic, that's affected," said Cothren.

Commissioners said they would try to emphasize tat the forum next Tuesday, 6:30 p.m., in the River Street Meeting Room, that the funding shortfall isn't limited to the clinic. The county budget overall, is affected, with the cost of providing service rising, revenue sources are shrinking.
The major decline has been in revenue from the sale of timber from state-managed county trust timber land. This year, timber revenues are budgeted at $900,000. In the past decade, they've usually totalled close to $2 million. Timber prices have fallen, however, and environmental constraints have limited the amount of county timber that can be sold.
Holloway said it appears the $900,000 figure will be achieved this year, but she wanted to have a report from the state Department of Natural Resources to update the figures.

At some point, there will have to be cuts in staff or services, said Commissioner George Trott.
After last week's forum in Rosburg, Trott said, a citizen commented that if he was going to pay higher property taxes to maintain the Wahkiakum Family Practice Clinic, he wanted to know what cuts the county was making, too.
At this point, with revenues and expenditures on track, there's no apparent need to start making cuts, the officials said.
This includes the county fair, Trott said. Fair board members have expressed concern their program would be cut, but so far there's no need, Trott said.
"They have a budget and should go ahead with it," Trott said.
Auditor Tischer said the board should try to avoid making staff cuts.
This happened in 1986 and created a hostile working environment, she said.
"We'll ask you to do the cuts in non-mandated services first, before mandated services," she said. "It hurts! Morale goes bad really fast.
"There's no fat in any of these budgets."

Officials said they would continue to investigate the possibility. First, they planned to discuss it with clinic staff and then have more talks with Cowlitz Family Health administrators and directors.
"We're not served by delaying," said Commissioner Dan Cothren. "We need to do some fact finding."

When the county purchased the clinic, it wasn't officials' intention that the county would continue to own and operate it, said Doumit, who was a deputy prosecuting attorney at the time and helped negotiate many of the contracts that set up the clinic.
"At the time, I felt, yeah, we'd take a loss but . . . " Cothren said. "We weren't going to be doing this long term. It was going to be self sufficient or profitable."