Fulton budget is going to be ugly

By D.L. Bennett

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fulton County's days of surviving on a once-fat surplus are over. And that means 2010 will be one ugly budget year.

Commissioners learned Wednesday during a preliminary briefing on the budget that finance officials expect to end 2009 with a $27.1 million loss. That would have been covered in a normal year by the $59.7 million surplus Fulton started with in January.

However, finance director Patrick O'Connor said collections will fall $30 million short this year because of late property tax billings, more than 29,000 pending appeals of appraisals and other conflicts.

"We are going to end the year with no fund balance or a negative fund balance," O'Connor said.

That's a big shift for a county that ended 2006 with more than $140 million in the bank.

Commissioner Lynne Riley said Fulton may need to impose emergency spending controls to limit the loss. But O'Connor said it's too late to have much impact on a budget that has just 10 weeks left.

Beyond that, O'Connor said Fulton can expect an additional $27 million in expenses for 2010 that it didn't have in 2009, including increased health care and pension obligations, a higher homestead exemption and elections.

Fulton can't even begin to guess how far down 2010 property tax collections will be, O'Connor said. Residential values were down for 2009, and tax experts say they will be down even more in 2010. Commercial values will likely nosedive, too.

County Manager Zachary Williams said he had told his managers to explain what 5 percent and 10 percent cuts would do to their operations. The county, he said, will have to look at core services and see what can be cut and what must continue.

The board will release a proposed spending plan Dec. 15.