County’s 2018-2019 budget includes hike in property tax levy

The Mills County Board of Supervisors have approved the county’s $25 million budget for the 2018-2019 fiscal year.
At a March 13 public hearing, the board voted unanimously to accept the county’s $25,095,850 budget for the next fiscal year. This year’s budget figure is up slightly from last year’s re-estimated budget by just under $1 million, meaning the county-wide tax levy will see an increase from the current 10.666225  (per taxable $1,000 valuation) to 11.54498.

Mills County Auditor Carol Robertson said this was a particularly hard budget year with valuations staying relatively flat while the cost of county business continues to go up throughout the state. She hopes county residents see there isn’t a lot of “fat” on this budget.

“We want people to see we’re trying to do a lot of things with the hopes of growing our valuation and to bring in more revenue,” Robertson said. “As we sat and struggled  through this budget – this was probably the worst budget year we’ve had for trying to make things happen – things came up that we didn’t have a lot of control over and we tried to see what we could do to make it happen.”

One of those surprises was the county’s 911 communications towers.

Robertson attributes a large chunk of the county’s budget increase to the county’s unplanned decision to build its own emergency 911 communications tower. The county is currently leasing out space on a private business’s tower near Emerson for its emergency communications.

Last year the county was told that current tower does not meet current federal communications standards and the upgrades the county planned as part of a $5.1 million bond secured in 2016 covering the county’s communications infrastructure, weren’t up to spec.

“We were going to have to make upgrades and we weren’t sure what that was going to cost and they (the owners of the tower) were going to raise the rent on us,” Robertson said.

The prospect of having to build a whole new communications tower was never part of the county’s plan, Robertson said.

“We had a place, we thought everything was good and then all of the sudden we were told it wouldn’t work on an existing one (tower),” Robertson said of the county’s current tower located near Emerson. “We were told we couldn’t do that and we needed to make changes. We were going to be charged $1,500 a month to the tower we’re on.”

The county decided a better option would be to build its own tower it could use for their own communication needs and also rent out to others, including cellular providers. The county owns two parcels of land they are currently considering for the new tower. The money for the tower will come out of the county’s emergency management fund. The project is expected to cost nearly $400,000.

“It will be a one time expense and there are cell phone companies who might want to use it which means there is potential for revenue,” she said.

Roberston said, in addition to the costs of the new 911 tower, the county also increased its funding to economic development for several as-yet-to-be-determined infrastructure projects. The cost of those projects is expected to run $410,000.

Departmentally, the majority of the county’s budgets show slight, cost-of-business increases across the board. The departments taking cuts include mental health, a 26-percent cut, and roads and transportation. The roads department, which remains the county’s largest line-item expenditure at $6.7 million, is down $200,000 from 2017-2018.

“Those are big cuts,” Robertson said. “Everyone tried to maintain or be close (in budgeting). Employees all got a wage increase and the insurance went up but we’re looking into that and doing something different for this next year. We hope to get that negotiated to bring our insurance costs down.”

Public safety and legal services are seeing a hike of 13 percent to $4.3 million. Robertson said the supervisors had to turn down a request for a new sheriff’s office vehicle during cost-cutting but the county will be seeing a 75 -percent reimbursement on the costs of supplying a resource officer for the East Mills School District.

The departments seeing the biggest budget increases are county administration (a 42 percent jump from last year), environment and education (32 percent) and physical health and social services (16.9 percent).