Ronica Watkins, Dallas County’s senior budget and policy analyst, recently presented the County Commissioners Court her office’s findings on the possible deficit in part due to the coming American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) cutoff. The county is also facing an outsized amount of overtime in the sheriff’s office, which has put its staffing budget in deficit.
Commissioner Andy Sommerman shared that the sheriff’s $5.6 million OT budget was spent by mid-December. He looked forward to implementing TeleStaff, as did other commissioners, among solutions such as firing poor performers and overtime abusers.
They voted yes to moving forward on a Kronos TeleStaff scheduling system implementation in six months.
For context, staffing impacts security, compliance and multiple aspects of the county’s law enforcement efforts, and several were discussed during the meeting. County salaries are 59 percent of the county budget.
It will be a one-time purchase with implementation and a one-year license. The vendor is immixTechnology and the contract will be made via the Department of Information Resources (DIR) contract No. DIR-TSO-4315.
Regarding ARPA, funds are going away but have been used over the past two years to stabilize the general fund. There will need to be funding shifts, and the commissioners will focus on 155 ARPA-funded positions in August.
The overall projected deficit was $50 million in April, Watkins explained. The county is reducing this in part by releasing encumbered funds totaling almost $9.5 million back to unallocated reserves, a manual process.
These are purchase orders that were sitting idle, she explained during the presentation. Many of them were for office supplies.
“We’re at a point where we can pivot,” Watkins said. “We can pivot and make the necessary adjustments, so we can be in a better place come Sept. 30 and moving into the budget.”
She also noted that the county’s OpenGov dashboard went unfunded in FY2024.
The Dallas County budget timeline:
- February: Upcoming fiscal year development
- March: Budget tip off
- May: Budget requests submitted, update to the commissioners
- June and July: Budget office works up analysis and budget proposal as departments give presentations
- July: Revenues reported
- Oct. 1: FY2024-25 budget start date
