The Carbon County Recreation/Transportation Special Service District board decided Monday afternoon to continue the funding freeze for any new projects for the foreseeable future.
They said the money is just not there, nor does it look like it will be for years to come.
The decision followed a 30 minute discussion concerning the district’s financial future. New board members Larry Jensen and Mark Morley had done some study on the issue and put together some projections that showed revenues vs. spending. It revealed that the district may need to save as much money as possible to take care of current and ongoing obligations.
“It’s pretty obvious that if something doesn’t change to bring more revenue in, we will not be able to meet our commitments to the county,” said Jensen. “It looks like by 2024, if we do not spend one more dime for anything, we will be $1.66 million short for our obligations, based on the current county contract (and other obligations).”
He said he put together the totals and that the total obligations for the district (with paying a $1.3 million contract to the county each year) is $44,921,000.
A big gap
“And we only have an estimated income (during that time, including the $2.7 million that the district now has in reserves) of $22,890,000,” he said.
Morley showed the board some graphs he had that showed various aspects of spending and revenues, and also projections on what might come into the district. He also had a graph showing gas production, which hit a peak in about 2009 and has since fallen off and continues to do so sharply. Everyone at the meeting agreed that they doubted that production would come back to levels it once was.
As for coal revenues, concern continues as mines produce less in the county and with the looming movement of Skyline Mine’s extraction of coal proceeding over the county line into Sanpete County, revenues from coal mineral lease royalties will probably decrease.
Board Member Dennis Christensen, who has been on the board for a number of years, said that the county contract is not set in stone and in fact in some years they have not paid the county all the money that had been agreed to, because it just wasn’t there.
Jensen said that he thought it would be a good idea to warn the commissioners about the situation so they can plan for the shortfalls. “I would like the commissioners to know that we don’t have anything,” he said. “And don’t come and ask.”
There was also some discussion about using the district’s ability to levy a tax on many of the unincorporated areas of the county to make up some of the shortfall, but it appeared no one thought that would be a good idea. The cities are not part of the district (they never joined) and neither are a few areas in the unincorporated county who withdrew their property from the district when it was formed, so they would not be subject to such a move.
“You would have to put a tax for the district to a vote of the people in the county by special election to do that,” said Board Member Richard Lee. “We would have to pay for that election and it would probably cost somewhere between $30-50,000 to run it.”
Revenue sag continues
Last year, the revenues from mineral lease money were down from past years and at one point it appeared the projected revenue budget would be in a huge shortfall. But higher revenues toward the end of the year looked much better and the district actually hit their budget revenue numbers. But this year once again, the numbers are pale and with obvious signs that mineral extraction is dropping, the positive that came from that end of year spurt has disappeared.
Pace Hansen, President of the Board, said that board members had been aware of the problem for quite some time, but that the information and the way it was presented to the board by Jensen and Morley was very helpful.