What’s happening?
Amanda Carter, budget director for the county, told commissioners the county’s fiscal year 2024-25 budget would likely require a tax rate increase due to increases from inflation and spending over the past several fiscal years.
“Prioritize your items that are important for you and your constituents, and then, as we calculate all those, then that will basically get you to your tax rate,” Carter said. “Don't focus on building your budget around ... your tax rate.”
Tax Assessor-Collector Tammy McRae compared the statutory no-new-revenue and voter-approval tax rates to the tax rate Carter used to build the base preliminary budget for FY 2024-25.
- Proposed budget base rate: $0.3696 per $100 valuation
- No-new-revenue rate: $0.3480 per $100 valuation
- Voter-approval rate: $0.3875 per $100 valuation
Managing the impact
According to data provided to the court by McRae, $23.03 million in new revenue will be by property taxes in 2025; however, Carter said the court has already obligated $19 million through previous court actions, such as staff funding.
“The situation is we cannot continue doing exactly the same services at the same price,” Carter said. “You can see that in a lot of the departments' budgets, ... there's not a single department that got the exact budget that they requested.”
Precinct 3 Commissioner James Noack said the county needed to prioritize cost-of-living increases, noting the county would need to increase the tax rate. Carter reiterated that with the deadline to put a voter-approval tax rate election, or VATRE, on the ballot Aug. 19, the county will likely legally not have appropriate time to approve a tax rate election. However, the county does have $14 million to work with to fund positions and any new requests before reaching the voter-approval rate.
“People are hurting; their paychecks don't go as far as they used to,” Noack said.
Stay tuned
Contention arose between commissioners regarding how the county would fund positions in law enforcement and other departments in the coming days following presentations from the five constable precincts requesting more deputies.
While no positions were approved officially during the meeting, the court requested all departments seeking additional personnel return on Aug. 15 to discuss funding options.
Budget workshops will run from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. on Aug. 14-15. These workshops can be livestreamed on the county’s website.
