MUSCATINE, Iowa – It was a meeting of the minds Tuesday at the Muscatine County Administration Building as county department heads met to discuss solutions to looming budget cuts.

“The reality is there’s going to have to be some budget cuts made,” said Sherry Seright, the county’s budget coordinator. “This is really a starting point.”

The group met to address drastic changes in the budget due to the economic recession and state budget cuts.

Seright said the general fund, which includes salaries and other personnel and office-related expenditures, needs to have a balance of at least 25 percent. Currently, the balances is 13 percent, enough to pay about three months worth of county bills.

Seright said she’s calculated the current budget and next year’s based on revenue remaining flat, although that scenario is unlikely.

“We can live with 13 percent,” Seright said. “Our ideal is 25. We can’t fall below 13.”

Though no definite decisions were made at Tuesday’s meeting, it was a chance to discuss where to trim $432,249 from the $8.64 million budget, an estimated 5 percent cut.

“We’d like our departments to have the opportunity to resolve their budgets,” Seright said.

The biggest budget cuts are being requested for the jail and sheriff’s office, with $118,292 and $85,119 from the jail and sheriff’s department, respectively. Sheriff Dave White, who attended Tuesday’s meeting, said he’s already discussed budget cut options with his deputies.

“The deputies said they didn’t want to lose anyone,” White said. “They would rather see a zero percent increase [in salary].”

White added that the Muscatine County Jail addition now being worked on will eventually, house 75 federal inmates, although they will not all arrive at once, he said. An estimated $600,000 a year in revenue is expected with the estimated                          

$9 million jail expansion and renovation project. That addition is due to be completed in 18 months.

Seright, however, cautioned relying too heavily on the jail to bring revenue when its finished.

“We don’t want to count on that fixing our problems,” Seright said.

County recorder Cindy Gray said she’s cut down significantly over the years, and said her budget is 13 percent lower this year than in 2005-06.

For Mike Johannsen, director of community services, the budget cuts will be especially hard as many residents in Muscatine find themselves relying on community services and available public housing.

“We’ve had an increase of people without jobs or homes,” Johannsen said.

Human resources director Nancy Schreiber said the national economic situation has trickled down to local levels, creating the “perfect, but bad, storm” for county agencies.

“We have a lot of problems on the table,” Schreiber said.

Bill Riley, information technology director, suggested switching paychecks from paper and mailing to an electronic system.

Curt Weiss, director of county conservation, and Riley suggested cutting budgets and spending now in hopes of saving the need for it when the fiscal year begins in July 2010.

The department supervisors are doing what they can to find alternatives for cutting budgets, rather than furloughs or other measures as other counties have taken. They hope to meet again in a few weeks to discuss ideas and solutions.

At the same time, department heads  said they don’t want to see a tax increase to make up the difference.

Seright had presented the opportunity for department heads to meet at a recent Board of Supervisors meeting, giving a voice to departments rather than “11th-hour cuts” being made by the Board at the last minute.

“I appreciate the opportunity as department heads to come together and talk about this,” Johannsen said. “The ‘we’ part gets important now. We are a team. It’s less ‘I’ and more ‘we.’”