No matter how the math is penciled, Grays Harbor County is facing a deficit in its 2018 general fund budget unless significant changes are made.

That’s a serious situation because several services and departments are funded through the general fund, including the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office and the county courts.

Commissioners are looking at the spending requests of department heads and attempting to reconcile those with the expected revenue for next year. Right now, there is an almost $1.7 million difference — in the red.

Commissioner Wes Cormier’s version of the budget is balanced to zero, but it would likely result in layoffs. Commissioner Vickie Raines submitted a budget that saw significant cuts and had each department spending only 98 percent of its budget to end the year without a deficit.

Commissioner Randy Ross — in his first year as a commissioner — recently submitted a new draft version of the budget that saw use of the public safety sales tax (approved during the general election in 2016, known as the three-tenths of 1 percent sales tax) to help nearly-balance the budget.

Ross’ budget included a cut to the corrections department amounting to $350,000, a cut to the prosecutor’s office of $150,000, and a $550,000 cut to the Sheriff’s Office.

His budget then included transfers in from the public safety sales tax fund, including $350,000 for corrections, $200,000 for the prosecutor, and $550,000 for the Sheriff’s Office.

“There is a hole in the budget and it looked like we are going to have to back fill with the public safety sales tax — not cut public safety and try to keep what we have,” Ross said on Nov. 6. “We have revenue that’s going up less than 1 percent total every year, and we have expenses going up more than 5 percent.”

Ross went on a local radio station last week and discussed his proposed budget, and the community response to using the public safety sales tax funds to fill the hole has been less than positive.

During the county commission meeting on Nov. 6, three members from the public addressed the proposed budget and said Ross’ use of the funds is “supplanting.” Supplanting generally means that one fund is used to cover another.

David Agner, Kimberly Edwards and Linda Webb all run their own respective neighborhood watch groups, and each said they had campaigned to their local communities for the public safety sales tax with the understanding that the funds raised would be used to hire new deputies (specifically) and support the financially-ailing local public safety departments (generally).

In taking from the public safety sales tax fund to replace cuts made to the Sheriff’s Office in the general fund, Ross’ proposed budget is using funds from the public safety sales tax fund to balance the entire general budget, they argued. And that is not what they were told they were supporting when they campaigned for the tax in 2016, they said.

“People don’t trust you — they were worried that if they approved (the tax increase) that the commissioners and the politicians would try to take some of the money for other purposes and leave public safety without the resources and funding needed to keep our communities safe. Mr. Ross, this is exactly what you are proposing to do,” Edwards said. “ This is something that we are definitely passionate about, and we want to ensure that our word going out there and getting people to vote for this… that we’re not basically eating our words with the public, where now you’re using the money for other reasons.”

Leading up to the election in 2016, Commissioner Raines and other elected officials held “educational meetings” throughout Grays Harbor County to explain what the tax would be used for. Supplanting was not part of the plan, Edwards and the other neighborhood watch people said.

Ross was not a commissioner at the time.

“I didn’t promise you — I promised to faithfully fulfill the duties of my office, and part of that is passing a budget,” Ross said.

After the meeting, Commissioner Raines said she won’t vote for a budget that involves supplanting public safety sales tax funds.

During the meeting, Raines also was cautious to note that all of the proposed budgets are preliminary.

“At this point, what we’ve had presented has been preliminary budgets,” Raines said. “I didn’t want anyone to think that we were to the point where we had a budget ready to go and that was something we were taking action on. We’re still in the airing out stages of things.”

The county has a public safety sales tax committee that makes recommendations for how the sales tax funds should be spent.

According to a report provided by Raines, the public safety sales tax is expected to collect more than $1.6 million. The committee recommended that each department sustain the staff they hired through the sales tax last year, and an additional $500,000 would be put toward a courthouse project which would see a third Superior Court courtroom being built. No other changes were recommended by the committee.

The county had been banking on receiving funds from the state to build the third courtroom, but the local project did not rank high enough on a list of projects statewide to receive funding in the state’s budget.

Commissioner Cormier was absent from the meeting. He was excused by the other commissioners.