Sigh. I support SAR, but this article irritates me for one very specific reason (and completely staying out of the whole "how should SAR be funded" argument):
The Fiscal Year for the State of New Hampshire just started on July 1, so we are only ONE month into this year's budget.
As a general rule, when a budget is developed, if they have $180,000/year, all $180,000 isn't dumped in at the beginning. Frequently, it's divided over 12 months, although adjustments can be made for traditionally heavier or lighter use months. For these purposes, let's just assume they divided it evenly across the months.
What that means is that the budget is really $15,000/month. Admittedly, this July has been a tough month for SAR with a variety of rescues including multiple drownings/near drownings in lakes and people getting lost and injured in the mountains. The article states that they've spent $26,000 this month. Okay, $26,000 is greater than $15,000, so, yeah, technically SAR is in the red. There will (hopefully) be other months where the SAR costs are/will be less that balance that out.
On the flip side, revenue is usually plopped in to the budget when it is most likely to be incurred, so something like snowmobile registration revenue won't occur until around November/December. That will also help balance things out.
My opinion is that it's a disservice to publish an article like this with only one month's worth of data available. Yes, SAR has traditionally gone over budget and yes, going over budget in the first month of a fiscal year doesn't bode well for the rest of the year because you're constantly playing catch up, but there's entirely too many unknown factors for them to cry "we're in the red" already. Look at this again after you've got 6 or 9 months worth of data and I'll be more likely to support/defend you.
) I'd be happy that my money was used wisely.
