The final adoption of the budget will take place on Aug. 8. The board then will hear recommendations from the Capital Improvement Committee regarding facility improvements, equipment, vehicles and new personnel. 

"Where the average citizen is concerned, the most significant element in the budget is the fact the county board is maintaining the same tax rate as in prior years," said Terry Doolittle, deputy county manager who, along with County Manager Stan Griffis, Finance Director Maureen Arnold and Budget Director Jim Throop, is one of the architects of the budget. 

"There is no tax increase in this budget," he said. "One of the major elements of this budget is to provide funding for the debt service on the new Superior Court building and sheriff's administration building. Construction on those facilities is scheduled to start in early spring of 2002, and this budget provides for the debt service, which is going to be roughly $30 million for both facilities. 

The debt service, as explained by Doolittle, is similar to a mortgage. In essence, the county is borrowing $30 million over a 20-year period, with a first payment of $1.3 million, and when construction is completed, the debt service will go to $2.5 million annually. 

"The two facilities will be built out by the adult detention center, located in Florence on Diversion Dam Road and State 79," Doolittle said. "The base bid for the court building is $20 million, and the additions to it could run it up to about $23 million. The sheriff's facility has a base of $4.5 million." 

As part of the financing arrangement, last week the supervisors executed a property transaction between the county and the highest bidder, which was the Pinal County Municipal Property Corporation. The land, which is adjacent to the jail, will be leased back to Pinal County and will serve as the site for the courthouse and sheriff's office. 

According to the master plan, a number of cost-saving elements have been incorporated into the design for the new complex. 

"Right now, when we bring prisoners from the detention center to the present court building," said Doolittle, "we have to put them into a van and drive them over there, accompanied by two or three officers, and then we have to repeat the process when the hearing or trial is concluded. The new facility will have an enclosed corridor leading from the jail to a secured area in the courthouse. The prisoners will never come in direct contact with the public, and it will take only one officer to walk a prisoner back and forth between the facilities." 

The new budget also accounts for increases in a related area: the costs involved in indigent defense ... defending those accused of crimes and who are unable to afford their own attorneys. 

"Along with population increases comes increases in crime," said Doolittle. "Whenever someone is arrested who cannot afford a lawyer, we have to either make a public defender available to that person or pay for a court-appointed attorney. We're also responsible for prosecuting the individual and while we're doing it, we've got to feed, clothe and house them. Of course, if they're found guilty, then we have the costs of keeping them in the county or state prison for the term of their incarceration." 

Doolittle also pointed out that the county continues to have increases in long-term-care payments to the state. This year the increase amounts to about $1.4 million, partially due to an influx of residents to the county. 

"Currently, we pay over $9 million to the state for indigent health care," Doolittle said. "And that money goes into a pool at the state level, and the state manages that program for providing those services. We pay $6.3 million for the Arizona Long Term Care System (ALTCS) and $2.7 million for the acute care program. It's a contribution based on a formula that was derived back in the early 1980s, and in fact, we believe that we pay more into it than we draw out." 

Other items covered in the budget are 63 new vehicles for the Sheriff's Office, a 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment for county employees and a fund to cover the costs of complying with the Growing Smarter statutes, which includes such items as the development of a comprehensive plan and providing additional manpower to review and implement new state statutes regarding the installation and approval of septic systems. 

"Another project that we have under way is our county Geographic Information System (GIS), which is used in conjunction with the county assessor and Public Works Department," said Doolittle. "Right now, we are wrapping up a prototype stage in which we selected an area of the county to go in and do all of our right-of-way research, along with our parceling and to digitize this information, so that it will be available for our own use and that of the public." 

According to Doolittle, GIS is roughly a three- to four-year project, costing somewhere between $2 and $3 million. It is a system by which people can get on the Internet and get directions to locations or do research on properties. It will also give them what the zoning is, what the floodplains are in a particular area, rights of way, the owners of a particular parcel and the easements that may go across the properties. 

"Those are probably the main points in this year's budget ... a lot of facility building, infrastructure, increased costs in indigent defense and health care, and then our employees' cost-of-living adjustments."