It’s budget time at the county and Lycoming County Commissioner Scott Metzger announced that budget talks have started with the goal of looking for ways to make cuts in order to present a balanced budget to taxpayers.

He noted that the county has not had a balanced budget for 15 to 20 years and has not raised taxes since 2015, something Metzger said the commissioners want to avoid if possible.

“Things are very tight in accounting. We continue to look for cuts…But as things continue to go up in price, it’s hard to maintain that bottom line,” he said.

“We ask that department heads continue to be diligent. Make sure that they watch out for the taxpayers,” he said.

“As we stated a few weeks ago, it’s not going to be where we just rubber stamp stuff now, and we’re gonna double check everything to make sure the work is done,” he added.

Commissioner Marc Sortman concurred.

“Thank goodness we’re looking at bills that come in that are questionable, and we are questioning them. So let that be known out there as well,” Sortman said.

“The only thing we can do is ask for people to cut…we’re not asking for something that everybody else isn’t asking for. The taxpayers have been asking for it for years. And it’s time that it gets to our level, and it gets taken care of,” he said.

Sortman admitted that department heads and elected officials would “love that their budgets go up this year,” but he noted “it’s just not there.”

“The money’s not there. We’re going to get ourselves in a good position within the next year or two, but it takes a little bit of hardship. We’re in that hardship right now, but we’ll get through it,” Sortman added.

The budget impasse at the state level is not helping the process, Metzger said.

“(From) food pantries to the Head Start programs-everybody is hurting. We have to get a budget passed at the state level. They have to stay down there until they get this resolved because it’s hurting everybody,” Metzger stressed at this week’s commissioners’ meeting.

The county relies on state funding for many of its programs, he said.

In the past, the commissioners have looked to the county’s fund balance to finance capital projects, which has reduced that fund “drastically,” Metzger said.

” And we have not gone out on bonds. Initially we wanted to go out on a bond this year. We have not gone out on that bond yet, and we’ve reduced those capital projects where we’re not nearly as big as we once did, and we’re gonna have to put those projects off until we get that bond, because we can’t continue to reduce the fund balance. It’s like reducing your savings account, your ticket account, stuff that’s generational. We have to go out on a bond for those generational projects, which has not been going on for numerous years in this county, always just take it out of the fund balance,” he explained.

“We’ll get there. We’re in the right direction. We just have to continue to work diligently to get there,” he added.

“We can’t pretend the money’s here, when it’s not. We’re not going to run ourselves into debt that we can’t afford,” said Commissioner Mark Mussina.

The budget deficit came to light last year during budget season, when Sortman shared that the financial team had approached the commissioners and revealed there was a problem with the county’s finances.

“We started cutting the budget, and we started looking at things and I think the entire team of the county did a phenomenal job reducing it. I think we were somewhere around our $12 million deficit. Got into a $4 million deficit, which was manageable. Not where we want to be. We want to be at no deficit. But we got to the $4 million deficit (and) thought, oh, we’ll be in pretty good shape this year. Now it’s September 1, and we’re strapped with the same issue we had last year on October 1,” Sortman said.

“This year, it’s, coupled with the fact that tax dollars have not come in yet, and …money from the state hasn’t come in yet. So it’s not that our budget is that far out of whack, but we’re hit with a different side of that budget this year that we weren’t expecting,” he continued.

“It’s not doom and gloom. We’ll get through it, but we create debt that we don’t want to have, that we’ve got to get paid off then and get right back into getting that balanced budget,” he added.

Metzger said that the commissioners will keep the public updated as the budget season progresses.