Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart presented $21.5 million in potential spending cuts Tuesday, including trimming proposed funding and staffing increases to the police and fire departments and reducing services to the youth and elderly.

The plan asks County Executive Craig Gerhart to lay off enough employees to save $5 million. Such a program would mean 85 jobs, currently unspecified, take many weeks and likely result in sharp public criticism, Gerhart said.

His plan would eliminate $3.1 million in funding for video cameras in police cars, $4.1 million for employee performance pay raises and $1.36 million for new public safety vehicles.

“I’m not going to propose that we adopt all of these, but I think these are areas that we can look at,” Stewart said, starting the discussion with his fellow supervisors. “That’s why I’ve gone above and beyond what I think we should cut.”

This story continues below
Advertisement

Stewart spent the past week trying to find a way to pay for a new multimillion-dollar crackdown on illegal immigrants and still eliminate enough spending to reduce the proposed 21-cent tax rate increase by at least 3 cents, which would require $10 million in reductions.

His plan includes 32 cuts, including small ones, such as $75,000 by suspending periodical subscriptions at the libraries and $5,300 in supervisors’ 2009 pay raises.

Other supervisors and county officials sharply questioned the proposal, asking why Stewart wanted to remove so many positions and why he did not share his plan until the board meeting.

Eliminating the cameras for the police cars would jeopardize the county’s defense for its illegal immigration crackdown, Gerhart and County Attorney Ross Horton said.

“The issues that will be raised by allegations of racial profiling or other bad behavior are things that can at least be countered by physical evidence of cameras,” Horton said.

Supervisors took a break Tuesday evening to give supervisors time to study Stewart’s plan and were not scheduled to vote on aspects of his proposal until later Tuesday night.

dgenz@dcexaminer.com