FY 2022 Budget Hearing Comments - for P&Z and Council Budget

A comment at the FY 2022 Sussex County Budget Hearing

Sussex County's population has grown from 157,000 in the year 2000 to 253,000 in the year 2020 - about a 50% increase. The data used are from the Delaware Population Consortium. 

It feels like the county is tearing at its seams. With this explosive growth, certain parts of the County's budget have grown accordingly. 

Sussex County's Fiscal Year 2022 budget is $278M. It is nearly 4 times the $74M of Fiscal Year 2000 budget. Considering the 56% inflation since the year 2000, the proposed budget is about 2.4 times that of the year 2000, 140% increase. 

I understand that $45.5M of this year's revenue come from the American Rescue Plan Grant Fund. So, if we remove that $46M from FY 2022 budget, it is 86% increase with the inflation considered.

 I looked at the P&Z Staff Salary budget, and it comes out to be 26% increase since the year 2000. 

We know that the work of P&Z staff has increased tremendously in the last 20+ years. Not only the number of applications increased, but also the volume of papers that have to handle. Some of the applications include over 1,000 pages. Thanks to the technology, which is supposed to reduce and simplify the workload actually added more work because now the public expects those papers to be uploaded online and the application status to be updated. GIS is a wonderful tool for many reasons, but again that is another tech thing that the P&Z has to embrace. Besides, the type of land use applications have become more diverse and complicated, such as the biogas.

I applaud the addition of one position to accommodate the public inquiries.

P&Z Director may not want to ask for more for his office, but the public view is that P&Z is not staffed adequately to handle the flurry of applications they have to process. Sure, many of them have been backlogged due to the pandemic restrictions, and this housing boom can stop as we have seen in the past years. If that worry is the reason not to increase the staffing for P&Z, then the process has to be slowed down to make sure all the applications are processed with the accuracy and in-depth review as the public demands nowadays.

The next is a delicate topic, but should be considered anyway. 

There is one area of the Sussex Budget that did not grow, but actually decreased. I am talking about the Sussex Council. The Council members' jobs may have been part-time jobs for 5 persons 20 or 40 years ago. 

The Councilperson's salary was about $24,000 in the year 2000 and it is now roughly $30,000, a decrease of 20% considering the inflation. 

In my opinion, the Council's responsibilities are now more than full-time jobs.

It may be too late for the next year's budget, but I would suggest we consider raising the Councilperson's salary to a full-time compensation. I know that the Council members would not want to raise their own salary, but the Sussex residents should seriously consider making the Council's salary increase a priority.

I did the math: Even if we raise the yearly salary from $30,000 to $70,000 for 5 Council members, the increase of $200,000 and the corresponding employment benefits come about to be about 0.1% of the County's annual budget. In return, the public should expect the Council members to be working full-time on the most consequential and crucial jobs in the County.

This may not happen within a year or two, or all at once, but we should consider it in the future budgets and follow the procedures to make this happen.