County budget going up $2.7 million in 2017-18

Mills County’s proposed budget for the 2017-2018 fiscal year will be up for discussion at a public hearing Tuesday, March 14, at 10 a.m.

The hearing, to be held in the Mills County Board of Supervisors meeting room at the county courthouse, will be open for public comment on the county’s proposed $23.4 million budget.

An issue expected to raise questions is the county’s overall budget going up from its current level of $20.7 million to $23.4 million over the next fiscal year. In an interview last week, Mills County Auditor Carol Robertson said the bulk of that budget bump is being attributed to a $3.6 million capital improvement project the county is undertaking to improve rural emergency communications and an unplanned road project along Highway 34 and 188th Street.

Robertson said the county bonded for over $5 million to purchase property to house and equip two communication towers for use by law enforcement, fire and rescue and emergency management. A large chunk of that money is on the current budget with the remaining – that more than $3.6 million – to come off next year’s books.

“That is why you see that high increase,” Robertson said. “This will finish that out in the 2017-2018 budget. It’ll improve communications significantly and bring us up to where everyone else in the state is going to be for emergency communications.”

Lonnie Mayberry, chair of the Mills County Board of Supervisors, said the Highway 34 and 188th Street project, which will coincide with the construction of the new Love’s Travel Center this summer, will add a stop light and a widened turning lane off Highway 34 when completed.

Overall, the county’s budget shows a levy increase from 9.40932 last year to 10.66225 for 2017-2018, meaning the county’s tax asking is up over $1 million from $7.7 million to just over $9 million in the next fiscal year.

The increases in the levy and the tax asking – and the overall increase in the budget – may appear to paint a grim picture of the county’s budget but Mayberry sees a lot of positives. He said the county is in “great financial shape” and he hopes to keep it that way.

While Mayberry said he doesn’t like to see taxes raised any more than other property taxpayers, he pointed out the county, in recent years, has added an addition on the county engineer’s building and acquired nearly six acres of land off Railroad Ave. and another 40 acres south of the Pony Creek Conservation Center without a tax hike.

“Nobody wants to raise taxes, nobody wants to and I don’t either,” Mayberry said. “But we’ve cut and cut the past few years. So when something like our health insurance goes up $120,000 like it has the last two years and we’re only bringing in about $100,000 in new income, it’s tough. We’re in the red before we even start (the budget process). We’ve cut all the fat we can and we’re trying to move forward while keeping services good.”

Robertson agrees.

“We’re not in a bad place, we’ve done a lot of things without having to levy too much more money,” Robertson said, pointing to improvements to the courthouse parking lot and new additions on the engineering building. “We’ve used a lot of different funds for these projects. All-in-all, we’ve accomplished more and will do more this year.”

Departmentally, the county budget shows slight increases across the board. Reflected in the budget is a 3 percent raise for most county employees. The auditor’s office will receive a 4-percent hike. The county’s health insurance costs were also expected to go up 9 percent across the board but with wellness program enrollment, that premium increase was slashed to 5 percent.

“As a whole, the departments, even with raises and insurances, weren’t up a whole lot,” Robertson said. “All the departments seem pretty fiscally responsible in trying to keep things down.”

The county’s largest line item expenses continue to be roads and transportation ($6.7 million), public safety and legal services ($3.6 million), physical health and social services ($2.1 million), county administration ($1.6) and county environment and education ($1.5 million). Roads and transportation and county administration, however, were the only departments to see substantial budget increases from the current year.

The county’s mental health and intellectual and developmental disabilities line item will see a 19-percent increase in its budget. But at just over $440,000 it is among the county’s smallest budgeted departments.

Public health, which is under the physical health and social services umbrella, is seeing its budget cut by more than $50,000. But, overall, the physical health and social services department, which also handles veterans’ services, chemical dependency and sanitation, saw an 11-percent increase in its overall budget line.

Mayberry said meeting the needs of the county’s departments with the pool of money available is the hardest part of the budget process.

“They all want more and they all deserve more,” Mayberry said. “(Sheriff Gene) Goos could use another deputy or two. Public health could always use another $50,000 to $100,000. And secondary roads, at a million dollars a mile, it doesn’t take long to eat up a million dollars. We’ve made every department do as much as they can with less.”

As the board and Robertson did the math on this year’s budget, weighing different scenarios on increasing taxes and keeping budgets in check during challenging economic times, balancing an acceptable amount of cuts and increases factored heavily in every line of the budget.

“We looked at every department and we took money out of a lot of areas,” she said. “We told them this was how we manage this year and we’re only raising it a little bit to get through. Next year, we’ll have to take another big look.”

If approved, the county’s 2017-2018 budget will go into effect July 1 and run through June 30, 2018.