Budget

October 27, 2009

Dear County Residents,

On this website you will find my proposed Salt Lake County budget for 2010. One year ago, I presented a 2009 County budget of $802 million dollars, including operating and capital costs; it was the first time the budget had declined in real dollars in two decades. The budget I am proposing this year lowers that number dramatically, to $638 million, a decrease of $164 million.

Shrinking county spending by $164 million in one year is very difficult. We have taken a measured and conservative approach to balance the budget. As we do every year, we went through spending requests program by program, line by line to ensure that County taxpayers receive the highest quality government services for their tax dollars.

Even today we are asking each County employee and every manager to seek new savings that may have been overlooked in our exhaustive process, look for more efficient ways of doing business, and to help us find any services, processes, and expenditures that were no longer needed.

Our County employees will be sharing in the burden of balancing this budget with reductions in salaries and benefits.

I invite you to look at the budget recommendations in order to gain a better understand of the County’s budget and how your tax dollars are spent. Our books are open. I encourage your help in identifying ways to further our goal of reducing our expenditures to help your County government operate in the most efficient manner possible during this economic downturn. If something strikes you as a way to save more or spend less, let me know, send an email to budget@slco.org.

I look forward to hearing your suggestions.

Sincerely,

Peter M. Corroon
Salt Lake County Mayor