Portage commissioners working to trim budget

Departments within Portage County government are being asked to trim their budget requests for 2025 after asking for $11.7 million more than the county has to spend.

Jaclyn Petty, director of budget and financial management, has told commissioners the county’s 30 departments turned in about $80 million in budget requests, which is $11,747,061 more than the county’s budget of $68,270,275.

Petty said her staff worked with each department to reduce wage increases to step increases, or 1.25% for departments not on the wage scale, as well as removing expenses such as large furniture purchases.

When she presented the data to commissioners, three departments still were over budget − Prosecutor’s Office, Sheriff’s Office and Board of Elections.

Petty said she since has met with the finance manager in the Sheriff’s Office and has resolved its shortfall.

This screenshot from a recent meeting of Portage County Commissioners shows three departments over budget - the sheriff's office, the Board of Elections and the prosecutor. Since then, the sheriff's budget issues have been resolved, but the other issues remain.

That leaves a shortfall of just over $2 million in the Board of Elections and $888,668 in the Prosecutor’s Office. Commissioners, she said, now must decide how to resolve those shortfalls.

Petty said the Board of Elections’ shortfall includes about $1.5 million in equipment, which is paid through a contingency fund, leaving the shortfall at about $500,000.

Theresa Nielsen, deputy director of the Board of Elections, and the department’s director, Faith Lyon, also approached commissioners about their request. Nielsen said the board of elections approved a budget that included $10 extra for each poll worker, plus raises and bonuses for the office’s employees.

“Many of us have worked every day for the past 30 days, because that’s what the job requires,” she said.

Poll workers, she said, now earn $130 per day, or $135 for voting location workers who pick up and drop off equipment and make sure sites are staffed. Poll workers are on the job from 5:30 a.m. until paperwork is completed after the final vote is cast. The pay for training is not being increased. Nielsen said 600 to 800 people are trained in order to have 519 poll workers for each election.

The board also is asking for $9,400 for bonuses for staff, which Nielsen said is about 2% of what the staff earns. The Board of Elections has eight full-time staff members, and four “part time/full time” workers whose hours might increase for tasks such as verifying petitions or working in absentee areas.

“I think the evidence is quite clear that our staff go above and beyond,” she said.

The Board of Elections also asked for 6% raises for staff. Nielsen said Petty’s request to change the raises to a 1.25% hike was “insufficient.”

“I don’t think that there is an understanding of the amount of work that our staff does,” she said. “If they look at the cost of living increases over the last four or five years, their compensation has not kept up with that.”

The department’s staff is balanced between Republicans and Democrats, and employees in the department are paid the same to avoid accusations of partisan bias. The concern, Nielsen said, is that staff will leave for Summit County, which offers higher salaries.

Other items in the budget included things like a managed print agreement for the board’s copier, professional and technical services for testing required by the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office.

Commissioners asked Petty, director of budget and financial management, about state and federal funding for elections.

“There has been a lot of grant support for elections in the last few years,” Petty said. “I think we could be more conservative in their budget and see what grants come in, and if we don’t get grants, consider supplementing.”

Petty said that typically the county doesn’t invest much into elections, because they are mostly state-funded.

Petty said that while the county has about $5.2 million in unappropriated funds, most is tied to projects to which commissioners already have committed, such as equipment for the Board of Elections, renovations for the Public Defender’s Office, HVAC at the courthouse, elevator repairs at Riddle Block 1, enclosing an external stairwell at the County Administration Building and renovations at the county administration building.

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