Chair Catherine Harrington opened the Oct. 30 roundtable by asking staff to walk the five‑member board through a new county Service Level Assessment database meant to catalog Washington County’s services and help guide budget decisions.

The county’s assistant county administrator Faiza Noor told commissioners the SLA began as a two‑phase project: staff gathered a departmental inventory of services, then cataloged characteristics for each service — including geography, mandate status and approximate funding — and validated those entries through department review.

“We finalized a list of 297 services,” Noor said, noting that earlier tallies had reached roughly 1,000 entries before iterative review pared the inventory down. Noor and the assistant county administrator Marnie explained that the data include mandate source categories (state, county ordinance, federal and interlocal agreements), funding ranges (reported in intervals), and the percentage of a service paid from the county general fund as estimated by departments.

Noor and Marnie emphasized limits: the database uses funding ranges and represents fiscal year 2023 data, not current budgets. “This is self‑reported, high‑level data,” Marnie said. She and the CAO’s office warned that some services funded at the time by temporary federal programs (for example CARES/ARPA allocations) may no longer exist or may now be funded differently.

Commissioners tested the tool’s details. Commissioner Jerry Willey asked why a filter sometimes reported 320 rows; Marnie explained that departments had added a standard “department admin” service row in each department, adding roughly 23 rows to the summary view. Commissioners also queried how internal administrative services showed up during a transition toward a cost‑allocation plan; staff said some internal services appear as largely general‑fund supported in the FY23 inputs but that budgeting practice has shifted for several items since then.

County Administrative Officer Tanya Angie and other staff urged caution using the SLA as a primary source for exact dollar figures. “It will give you an approximate idea,” Angie said, adding that staff could follow up on specific items if commissioners requested more precise citations or current dollar figures. She noted, however, that doing that work for all services would exceed current staff capacity without added resources.

The board and staff agreed on common use cases for the SLA: identifying which services are provided to particular geographies, isolating services that are mandated by statute or agreement, and approximating which services rely heavily on general‑fund support. Staff said departments could produce follow‑up detail for a targeted subset of services if the board directed such follow‑up.

The presentation concluded with staff offering to run live filters for commissioners and to meet individually to answer deeper questions; commissioners complimented staff on the inventory and the tool’s utility for asking sharper budget questions going forward.

Ending: Commissioners and staff described the SLA as a point‑in‑time diagnostic to be used alongside the county budget and program plans, not a substitute for current fiscal detail. The CAO’s office recommended using the SLA to identify candidates for deeper analysis rather than as a standalone basis for immediate budget reallocations.