With plunging stocks on Wall Street and a looming billion dollar deficit in Albany, Erie County seems, a least for now, to be a bright spot.
"This is a very good piece of news," says County Executive Chris Collins.
Collins says there will be a budget surplus for 2008, of more than $5 million dollars.
Collins says, "We froze discretionary spending, we asked the why, why, why question as far as filling jobs, hiring out contractors, we did work in house and you know what - it's come in in almost every budget category that we've saved money across the board."
Just a month ago, Erie County Comptroller Mark Poloncarz was warning the financial picture was bleak.
"It wasn't too long ago you were saying there's a possibility for a deficit. What's changed?" asks Kristin Donnelly.
Mark Poloncarz says, "Number one, we got our final sales tax numbers."
Those numbers came in the second week in February.
Poloncarz adds, "If you look at it, our sales tax, it was $6.4 million dollars above budget, we're right now trending to have a $7.4 million dollar surplus. That had a huge impact if that had gone below budget we could easily be talking about a deficit."
No matter how it happened, the surplus money will go into the reserve fund.
"People might look at this surplus and say, alright - the county has $5 million dollars, why do my taxes have to go up?" asks Kristin Donnelly.
"Well, it goes back to, we need to have a fund balance in the $50 -$60 million dollar range based on having a billion dollar budget and we're not there yet," he says.
Collins says this should finally be proof to the Erie County Control Board that Erie County is under good financial control. He plans to submit a new four year plan, and if approved it could mean the control board moves into an advisory or "soft" status.
A larger reserve can also help when borrowing money. The larger the reserve, typically, the lower the interest rate.
The County has not borrowed money for capital projects in years and is currently locked in a battle with the control board over which entity should borrow for capital projects, but under the stalemate, neither can do so, so all capital projects are stopped.
