FY 2022 COUNTY BUDGET GUIDELINES AND PRIORITIES FINAL DRAFT.PDF

MARICOPA COUNTY
FY 2022 Budget Guidelines and Priorities
For Consideration by the Board of Supervisors on January 13, 2021
The purpose of these guidelines and priorities is to provide direction from the Board
of Supervisors to Elected Officials, the Judicial Branch, the County Manager, the
Budget Office and all departments so that they can develop a sustainable,
structurally-balanced budget that achieves the County’s mission and strategic
goals as set forth in the Maricopa County Strategic Plan within available resources.
Property Taxes
After consideration of all long-term pension contribution obligations and state
mandated payments, it is anticipated the primary property tax rate will remain
unchanged for FY 2022.
Other Major Revenue Source Assumptions
The base budget will assume the recession forecast values from the County’s
economic consultants for State-Shared Sales tax, State-Shared Vehicle License
tax, and Jail Excise Tax revenues.
Employer Retirement Contribution Funding
The base operating budget will be adjusted to fund the change to retirement
expense based on the annually computed contribution rates determined by the
retirement plans’ actuary. No decisions on other budget requests will be made
until after resources have been identified to support the employer’s retirement
contributions and any increases thereto.
Employee Compensation
Human Resources is directed to develop a targeted employee compensation
strategy which may include pay for performance, and a focus on retention and
service delivery. Any compensation strategy will be contingent on an evaluation
of economic conditions and funding challenges, including additional burdens or
cost shifts from the State of Arizona.
Budget Requests
1) Base budget requests for all departments and funds should allocate resources
to fulfill departmental mandates and should be prepared within baseline
amounts equal to the current budget plus authorized adjustments.
The Budget Office is directed to review and/or adjust budget baselines for the
following:
a) The annualized impact of FY 2021 budget issues or mid-year adjustments.
b) The annualized impact of other items, including intergovernmental
agreements and operational cost of technology initiatives, which were

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approved by the Board of Supervisors, so long as the impact was disclosed
at the time of the initial Board approval.
c) Items required by State law, such as judges’ and elected officials’ salary
increases and mandated contributions to AHCCCS, ALTCS, Juvenile
Corrections, the Department of Revenue and other mandated programs.
2) All departments must submit their General Fund and Detention Fund base
expenditure budget requests within their baseline budget unless otherwise
provided for in these guidelines. No funding will be available for new or
expanded programs in the General or Detention Funds. There will be no
process for Board of Supervisor approval to review any requests above
baseline which were not previously disclosed during a presentation to the
Board of Supervisors.
Budgeted revenue in any fund may exceed baseline amounts if justified by
projections.
Special Revenue Fund budget requests may exceed baselines, provided
revenue projections are sufficient to retain structural balance.
If the current revenue baseline in a Special Revenue fund cannot be met,
departments must reduce both base expenditures and revenue by an amount
sufficient to restore structural balance.
3) Where a request for additional General or Detention funding in order to meet
mandated services has been identified and quantified by a department during
a presentation to the Board of Supervisors, the requesting department may
submit a supplemental funding request on the supplemental budget forms
provided by the Budget office.
To allow for an adequate review of both existing resources as well as
supplemental requests, the budget submission date for both the baseline and
supplemental budget request for departments with a supplemental funding
request will be no later than 2 weeks from the adoption of these guidelines, or
in the case of elected officials new to their office in January 2021, no later than
two weeks after the presentation of their request to the Board of Supervisors.
4) All budget submissions will be analyzed by the Budget Office for potential
efficiencies.
User Fees
Per the Budgeting and Accountability Policy, user fees are to be reviewed annually
by departments in conjunction with the budget development process. Existing user
fees will be re-evaluated and necessary changes should be presented to the Board
of Supervisors.

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Contingency, Reserves and Fund Balances
The Budget Office is directed to provide a recommendation for the reserved and
unreserved levels of operating contingency in the General Fund.
In accordance with the Board of Supervisors’ strategic goals regarding structural
balance and reserves, fund balances will first be used to maintain reserves equal
to two-months of prior year operating expenditures in the General and Detention
funds. A decision on reserve levels will be made prior to allocation of General or
Detention fund balances for any other purpose.
No requests for new non-recurring, one-time General or Detention funds will be
entertained, unless they were
• identified and quantified during a presentation to the Board or were part of
a previous Board approved initiative and disclosed at the time of the
Board’s approval of the initiative and
• are necessary to meet mandated services.
In accordance with the Board of Supervisors’ strategic goal regarding structural
balance, requests to use Special Revenue fund balances should be limited to
either building reserves or one-time, non-recurring expenditures and should not be
used to offset an operating deficit. Any use of fund balances and other non-
recurring sources to support an operating budget deficit must be specifically
approved by the Board of Supervisors.
Expenditure Limitation
Increases to expenditures will be evaluated for their impact to the County’s
Expenditure Limitation as outlined in the Arizona Constitution Article 9 Section 20
and Arizona Revised Statute 41-563. To mitigate the impact of expenditure
increases on the expenditure limitation, financing will be considered where there
is an established, conservative repayment plan.
Capital Improvement Program
No funding will be available for General and Detention funded new capital
improvement projects until reserve decisions have been made by the Board of
Supervisors. Requests for Facilities Capital Improvement or Information
Technology projects will be reviewed using a process defined by the Facilities
Management Department or the Office of Enterprise Technology. Only projects
identified during a budget presentation to the Board of Supervisors will be
considered as part of the Facilities Management Department or Office of
Enterprise Technology review process. Projects prioritized as part of this review
process will be forwarded for consideration by the Board for funding within
available resources.
The Transportation Department will work with the Budget Office to develop an
updated Transportation Capital Improvement Program budget for FY 2021 that,
within available non-recurring resources, meets the strategic goal of developing,

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identifying funding, and beginning to implement a long-range plan for addressing
HURF funded projects and transportation infrastructure needs.