County Board Chairman on Budget and Sales Taxes

Today's News-Gazette had an interview with the Chairman of the Champaign County Board, Giraldo Rosales, with his plans to deal with the fiscal challenges facing the County. Excerpt:

After spending the past several years searching for a buyer and trying to make a dent in the mountain of debt tied to the nursing home, many of Champaign County's financial resources are depleted.

Now comes the tall order of paying for maintenance and building issues that were put off, dealing with a downtown jail and sheriff's office past its prime, finding a new place to put all those inmates and sheriff's offices, and paying for replacements for aging computers and software...

He hopes to implement it not by increasing property taxes but by asking voters to support a quarter-cent increase in the county's sales tax for public safety, now that the nursing home is no longer county-owned property...

Rosales says the county put off a significant amount of preventative maintenance work and needed repairs in some 20 buildings while making payments to cover nursing home debts...

The second part of Rosales' plan calls for setting aside an additional $500,000 in the county budget each year for work on the 20 buildings and the computer software.

Full article here, including an overview of many of the issues facing the County Jail facilities. It adds quite a bit to the Cheat Sheet post on the jail issues yesterday here. The County's Facilities Committee is meeting tomorrow, June 4th, and will be covering some of these topics, including a discussion specifically on the jail.