James Island PSD in Battle of the Budgets

Rival factions of James Island Public Service District commissioners, and the district staff, have presented different budget scenarios for financing fire, garbage and sewer services, but each plan calls for significant deficits after 2009.

While none of the plans call for a property tax increase in the near term, each would create deficits in the coming years that would climb above a half-million dollars yearly by 2012.

The new budget proposals, presented at a workshop Wednesday, would each spend somewhat less than the PSD staff first proposed in a $6.2 million budget that some commissioners dismissed as a wish list.

That first-draft plan projected that the service district would run out of money by 2012.

Now, with different solutions being proposed, the budget conflict is following what is becoming a familiar pattern on the seven-member commission.

On one side are four commissioners closely affiliated with the town of James Island, June Waring, Inez Brown-Crouch, Charles Rhodes and Karen Clark Thompson, the daughter of town Mayor Mary Clark.

They are pressing for the least expensive of the budget plans — the only one that does not call for dipping into the PSD's savings in 2009 — and they say they aren't done yet. Waring dismissed five-year budget projections, prepared by PSD staff, that show mounting deficits starting in 2010.

"That's just a scare tactic," Waring said.

On the other side are Commission Chairman Rod Welch and Commissioner Donald Hollingsworth, whose budget suggestions are near the spending levels first proposed by the staff.

"I don't understand why we are saying 'no' to so much stuff we need," Hollingsworth said.

The seventh commissioner, Eugene Platt, is playing the neutral role, while urging the commissioners to protect the service district's fund balance.

"In years to come, I would like the district to have a healthy fund balance," Platt said.

Much of the debate about the PSD's budget comes down to balancing the competing priorities of increasing pay and benefits for at least some of the service district's 116 employees to keep them from leaving to work for other local and county governments, and the desire to not raise taxes.

"We are trying to strike a balance," Waring said.

Reach David Slade at 937-5552 or dslade@postandcourier.com.

Copyright © 2008, The Post and Courier, All Rights Reserved