County Services To Be Cut With Major Deficit

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Story Published: Sep 15, 2009 at 4:29 PM PST

By Peter Bukowski

Money is tight for Yakima County, meaning services like law enforcement, and roads could be at risk. I went to the County to find out what, if anything tax payers could be losing in 2010. County Commissioner Mike Leita explained the time for small cuts may be over.

"You can only save so many pencils, you can only save so many erasers. And that time has come to now where were going to be reducing our services in 2010"

Money has gotten so tight in the county, the the last park they were maintaining, Eschbach, will close in 2010 because there just wasn't money in the budget.

And it's not the only place the County will have to cut in 2010. Of the 7 categories of county funding, they'll only be funding 4 in 2010. If the problem lasts much longer, cost cutting just won't be enough.

"if we believe this to be a long term issue and we have to reduce our services to where we feel the community as a whole is at risk with law and justice, we will go to the community and ask for the community to have a tax increase," Leita says.

And tax payers can make a difference sooner than 2010.

"If 3/10ths goes away county-wide, there will be 100 jobs of law enforcement officers and law and justice people that will be lost at the end of 2010."

So the cuts in 2010 will have to be considered carefully

"We don't want to kink that cylinder as things come through the law and justice system. Because if we do and we didn't have enough prosecutors but the sheriff had plenty of people out on the street, that would cause a potential issue," explained County Budget Director Craig Warner.

And it's a crisis the County is now trying to keep out of the pockets of taxpayers like you.

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