Expenses are $5.7 million or 4.5% higher than the $126.3 million budgeted this year and revenues are planned to jump by $12.9 million or 9.7%. Given the uncertain economy, the commissioners issued a hiring freeze for the rest of this year and next and have reined in the annual raise program to 2%.
County Administrator Judi Boyko said $5.3 million of the budget increase is for personnel.
Boyko told the commissioners that most county employee wages are more competitive than they have been in past years.
“your investment in your employees has gotten us to where we are at least competitive in the market. We will not see that level of increase in future years, at least the next couple,” she said.
Personnel costs consume roughly 68% or $89.5 million of the proposed general fund budget for next year.
“When the county’s individual greatest expense is personnel, at nearly 70% of expenses, the compounding cumulative effect of expanding wages becomes unsustainable,” Boyko told the Journal-News. “The board of commissioners will remain deliberate in balancing employee welfare and taxpayer burdens.”
Other notable expenditures include $5 million each for the county engineer’s paving program and upgrades for the Emergency 911 dispatch system. Another $15 million will also go into the capital reserve fund that is mainly paying for a massive space reutilization project.
Commissioner Don Dixon said residents should be aware their tax dollars aren’t just paying for salaries, “$5 million to the county engineer that goes to paving the roads, that’s for our residents, that’s their transportation system, that’s economic development, that’s quality of life stuff.”
The county will begin spending the capital reserve fund — it currently contains roughly $45 million — in earnest next year. Boyko said roughly $35 million will be spent over the next two years on the new sheriff’s dispatch and coroner’s office/morgue complex on the Princeton Road campus where the Board of Elections resides. Other moves are also in the works.
The budget also contains $93.5 million in operating reserves — nine months worth — and $16 million in budget stabilization in case of catastrophes.
On the revenue side of the ledger, Finance Director Dave McCormick said “this is considered a reasonably conservative revenue budget.”
Sales tax is the largest money maker for the county and they have budgeted $59 million for next year, a 3.5% increase. The bigger story is investment income, which is projected to jump 45.8% or $5.5 million next year to $17.5 million.
In 2007 investments earned $11 million, dropped to $1 million in 2013, then jumped to $7 million in 2019. That revenue source more than doubled to $15.4 million last year and the year-end projection for this year is $18.5 million.
Commissioner T.C. Rogers called it “a gift.”
Property tax will also jump by nearly 23% or $4 million next year to $21.5 million. The commissioners have given property taxpayers breaks in recent years, rolling back the entire $18.5 million property tax collection in 2022. Last year they waived the estimated $6 million property tax windfall they could have collected as a result of the average 37% property value hike. The commissioners traditionally don’t discuss any possible tax breaks until the budget is in the finalization stage at the end of the year.
The general fund is the main operational fund, but there are a number of entities that rely on outside resources such as state and federal funding, service fees like water and sewer and independent tax levies. All funds combined, the total tax budget for next year amounts to $542.5 million with revenues totaling $485.7 million.
In the fall, the commissioners will hold budget hearings with the various other elected officials and department heads to hammer out the final budget for next year. Boyko acknowledged “significant changes are looming” at the state and federal levels that could change things.
She said they are “addressing knowns and have not integrated any potential speculative outcomes in this tax budget, as legislative consequences are more formally defined we’ll be presenting to you obviously a revised operating budget toward the end of the year.”
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