Health District budget up 9 percent

Friday, March 26, 2004 | 8:59 a.m.

The Clark County Health District Board on Thursday approved a tentative budget that is nearly 9 percent higher than last year's "tightest budget" ever, but got little financial help from the state in achieving that boost.

The $55.3 million proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 must be approved by the Nevada Tax Commission. If that board has questions about it, the budget will go back before the Health District board for further review. Otherwise it will become part of the Clark County government budget.

"We are in a stronger position than last year," Health District Administrative Services Manager Karl Munninger told the board Thursday. "Last year it was the tightest budget in our history. This is a much more normal budget ... But it is still a very lean budget."

The new budget, which is $4.4 million, or more than 8.7 percent, more than last year, includes $55.1 million in expenditures.

The new budget also is 13 percent greater than four years ago.

Munninger said increases in regulatory fees -- including health cards, permits and immunizations -- over the past 18 months have added $515,000 to the budget to bring total regulatory revenues to $2.8 million.

The fees were increased in the wake of the financially strapped state pulling $2 million in state Health Aid to County funding. Munninger said the district will lobby the 2005 Legislature to restore those state funds.

As a result, currently about one-third of the district's funds come from federal dollars, another third from local taxes and another third from regulatory fees, he said.

The new budget adds $1.7 million to the Capital Reserve Fund to cover, among other things, projects that address bioterrorism issues and architectural designs for a new main Health District building.

On Thursday the board approved creation of the Proprietary Fund of $1.1 million to operate the Southern Nevada Public Health Laboratory. Supplies alone for that new facility will cost $437,000, according to the budget.

County officials expressed concern that school-based health centers and a companion mental-health screening program are underfunded.

Nevada Health Centers could face reduced hours of operation July 1 if additional grant money is not found. Also just $9,000 has been identified in the budget for mental health screening, which the district calls "insufficient to operate the program."

However, $350,000 in local funds were allocated to administer the HIV Ryan White Title I program.

The health district budget also includes a 4 percent cost of living adjustment to cover the last year of the employees' 2000-05 union contract.

In addition to trying to get state aid money restored, the district staff will attempt to restore a formula that more than 20 years ago funded the health district via property tax dollars. Since 1981, the Health District has been funded instead by a population-based formula.

Making such a formula change would increase the county's annual funding of the health district from $17.4 million to $35.3 million, Financial Services Manager Sandra Schulz said.

Health Board member Dr. Joseph Hardy questioned from where that money would come. "Someone else's budget?" he said.

Munninger said one option would be to spread the burden over all entities so that each would lose only a small portion of funding. But with the county, municipalities and other entities tightening their fiscal belts, a plan to reduce their existing property tax allocations figures to face opposition.