El Paso County is in such dire financial straits that “the public no longer can get the same level of service from county government.” County officials have repeated that so much of late it’s starting to sound like background noise.   But wait, county reporter Perry Swanson plucked that quote not from the county’s many recent marathon discussions about its budget “crisis.”   Rather, it came in July 1983 from the lips of then-Commissioner Terry Harris, warning of dire times after county departments were told to limit spending to a 4 percent increase over the previous year.   Harris’ remark, it turns out, is part of a long tradition for El Paso County government. “We always seem to have budget problems,” he said in September 2006, near the end of his tenure as county administrator.   Combing through news clips, Swanson found that Harris was right. The latest budget meltdown is nothing new, although he found some officials more colorful than others in their descriptions of the crisis du jour.   County Administrator Jeff Greene said in January 2007 that “the employees are paying the ultimate price,” after commissioners slashed janitor services, forcing employees and elected officials to, gasp, take out their own trash and, in some cases, clean restrooms. The “ultimate price?” Those words usually are reserved for those who throw themselves on a grenade to save others. But it must be a supreme sacrifice to empty your own trash can at work, according to Greene.   About four months later, he used another grandiose metaphor in a discussion about other budget cuts. “We are beyond crisis. This is desperate. We are drowning here,” he said.   Unfortunately, it’s an SOS the public has heard over and over, time and again.   In 1991, Clerk and Recorder Ardis Schmitt let loose on commissioners for threatening to cut her budget by 4 percent. “I am absolutely beside myself. I don’t know how you can do this to me,” Schmitt said. “I simply cannot handle that kind of cut.”   Or take then-District Attorney John Suthers’ reaction in September 1995 when commissioners were cool to his request for six more employees: “We’re all up a creek without a paddle, that’s what I think.”   And then there was Commissioner Tom Huffman’s remark to the Board of Health in November 2001. “Times are tight,” Huffman said. “There is a very real possibility that this county could be insolvent by 2003.”   Huffman apparently didn’t have a grip on the definition of insolvent. The county’s budget ballooned by 17 percent from 2001 to 2003.   So, the public has heard the world’scoming-to-an-end lamentations from county officials before. Makes it hard to know when the boy cries wolf, whether the ferocious critter really is at the door.Speaking of money problems   Some Colorado Springs officials wonder if it’s time to convert a 0.04 percent sales tax approved by voters in 2001 for public safety to a property tax. The tax brings in roughly $26 million a year and has funded new hires and substations and fire stations.   The economic slump underscores the sales tax’s volatility. With 53.9 percent of the general fund coming from sales tax, when the economy tanks, so does the city’s bank account. Thus, the thinking is to replace the sales tax with a property tax of 5.32 mills, which isn’t as sensitive to up and down times. That would add about $10 a month to a $267,000 home’s tax bill. Voters would have to approve.    CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0238 or pam.zubeck@gazettedev.gazette.com

A makeshift memorial Thursday near South Carefree Circle and Powers Boulevard, where 8½-month-old Azeleah DeLeon was killed in a traffic crash last week. A 26-year-old man was arrested in her death. Photo by (JERILEE BENNETT, THE GAZETTE)