Allentown – Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham announced (8/23) that numerous county programs will be cut or eliminated in 2011 due to the ongoing economic conditions and lack of revenue growth in the county.
“The national recession has changed the dynamic in the LehighValley during the last three years,” Cunningham said. “With no growth in revenue since 2008 – and with none forecasted for next year – we have to scale back what we fund.”
The county also will eliminate the “More for Children” program in 2011. The program is funded with hotel tax revenue, which has declined by 19 percent since 2007. The county has historically provided $100,000 to $150,000 a year to county school districts to support student educational visits to cultural arts and educational facilities in the county. “All of these programs have merit and benefit,” Cunningham said. “In normal economic times, these are initiatives that we would fund. When revenue levels drop, however, spending has to be focused on the things that we absolutely need to do in government.”
In addition to the elimination of ‘”More for Children,” Cunningham also announced the reduction of Quality of Life grant funding for next year. Last year, the county contributed about $200,000 to more than 20 cultural arts and community organizations.
“I am an advocate for having a small portion of our budget go to support cultural arts institutions in the county,” Cunningham said. “We intend to preserve this program but we cannot retain the same funding level next year. Hopefully, when economic conditions improve we can restore funding.” Cunningham is proposing a 13 percent reduction in funding, which will result in a cut to the AllentownArt Museum and the Mayfair festival in the city, while other organizations will receive the same funding level as this year with no increase.
Cunningham announced the elimination of 50 jobs for 2011, bringing a total of 150 position cuts during the last four years. Next year’s job cuts will bring the total number of Lehigh County full-time employees to 2,122, which is less than the number of employees that the county had more than 20 years ago in 1990.
"Everyone thinks that government only ever gets bigger,” Cunningham said. “Here in LehighCounty our government has gotten smaller. We are working to balance the impact of the necessary reductions between employees and programs. There will be shared pain in these cuts.”
Cunningham announced last week the elimination of three cabinet-level positions in his administration, including the director of capital projects, the public information director and the manager of regional partnerships. “There is no one-size fits all model in government. You have to manage government to fit the times,” Cunningham said. “In the end what we do cannot exceed what the taxpayers can afford.”
The Lehigh County Organics Recycling Facility currently employs seven people, two of them part time. Previously it had been operated as a free service to municipalities and funded through “tipping fees,” or fees that waste haulers paid in order to dump yard waste at the facility. Under Pennsylvania Law, municipalities are required to keep yard waste out of landfills. After a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision prohibited counties from charging waste haulers those tipping fees, Lehigh County continued to operate the facility at a loss, assuming close to $750,000 in risk each year in the hope that the decision would be reversed. Municipalities in the county will still be required under state law to recycle organic waste.
Additional cuts include reductions in the tax and license office that will result in doe hunting license operations being eliminated as a county function and turned back to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. “We are not required to do this and have not been doing it very well in recent years because it is not a core function,” Cunningham said.
Also, two full time positions in the print shop located in the Lehigh County Courthouse will be eliminated. Part time workers will replace the full time employees to reduce costs but the county still intends to operate the office full time, Cunningham said.
The county executive began announcing cuts last month in preparation for the release of the 2011 budget on Tuesday, Aug. 31. The county’s capital budget has been slashed by 50 percent, funding for the county’s Green Future program has been frozen and the annual municipal grant fund for regional partnership will be eliminated.
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