County adopts a $15.6 million levy

Published 10:14 am Thursday, September 11, 2008

There’s two ways to look at the proposed 2009 property tax levy approved Tuesday by the Mower County Board of Commissioners.

Suppose for an instance, a Mower County Jail and Justice Center bond was not looming on the horizon.

The proposed levy increase without the bond would be 3.9 percent.

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Suppose also, concerns about jail over-crowding and court security had forced the county to bond for a new Mower County Jail and Justice Center.

In that case, the proposed levy increase with a jail and justice center bond would be 21.7 percent.

The Mower County Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted a proposed 2009 property tax levy of $15.6 million at Tuesday morning’s regular meeting.

That represents an increase of $2.74 million over the 2008 levy.

Of that increase, $492,086 is for regular county services.

Meanwhile, $2.24 million is for the net bond payment for the proposed jail and justice center.

The levy figure concludes a summer-long effort by commissioners, staff, department heads and others to crunch the numbers, revenues and expenditures, non-tax levy revenues, program aides and dedicated reserves.

Still to come is the county’s proposed budget for 2009. That, along with the proposed tax levy, will be examined Dec. 4, when the county commissioners hold their annual Truth in Taxation hearing.

Of course, not to be ignored are the city of Austin and Austin Public School District shares of the property tax levy as well as special taxing authorities, but none is larger than that consumed by the county.

The 3.9 percent hike without the bond and the 21.7 percent hike with the bond cannot be increased; only reduced or left alone at the year’s end when the elected officials adopt a new budget and tax levy.

County coordinator Craig Oscarson had the duty Tuesday to explain the situation.

Oscarson started by saying the budget committee had fears going into the process about levy limits.

When department heads came to the committee with their individual budgets, those fears grew. “If you ignore the justice center, if everybody would have gotten everything they wanted, that would have been an 8 percent levy increase by itself,” Oscarson said.

“The finance committee set an internal goal of 4 percent of less plus the levy for the justice center project,” Oscarson said of the process leading up to Tuesday’s revelations. “To accomplish this goal the county will need to reduce the budget requests by little over $500,000.”

To do that, the budget committee made cuts to the spending budget.

According to Oscarson, they include:

$200,000 for a Mower County Sheriff’s Office impound facility.

Reduction of equipment replacement requests: $200,000 to $230,000.

Hold the line on outside agency requests: a $40,000 savings.

Limit new funding for new personnel: a $100,000 to $130,000 slash in spending.

Oscarson also said the officials and staff continue to take hard looks throughout the expenditure budget just like last year when only six of 12 new hire requests were granted.

A 4 percent increase in health insurance premiums compared to last year’s 21 percent will also assist their calculations.

Still, there are the notorious “unfunded mandates:” state ordered programs or services for which the county is not paid.

The county department of health and human services saw $218,000 in costs shifted to the county last year. Over the last three years, the total is $745,000.

As far as the jail and justice center project goes, the commissioners approved using the wind energy differential ($300,000) for the jail and justice center bond payment in 2009.

“While the amount is expected to grow, we are cautious in this budget cycle to use the current year’s revenue for budgeting,” Oscarson said. “If the revenue does increase, the impact can be realized in the 2010 bond payment year.”