County tax cut proposed

Aug. 10—Johnson County Judge Chris Boedeker proposed a 7.2% property tax rate cut on Monday.

If adopted, the county's current tax rate of 41.5 cents per $100 of property valuation will drop to 38.5 cents per $100 beginning with the new fiscal year. The county's new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

The proposed cut couples with commissioner's decision earlier this year to increase the homestead exemption within the county from 1% to 3%.

The proposal remains just that for now given that the Johnson County Commissioners Court will not adopt an official tax rate until Sept. 11. Commissioners will vote on adoption of the county's budget for the upcoming year on Sept. 5.

Boedeker outlined his proposed budget during Monday's commissioners court meeting adding that work to finalize the budget will continue through this week.

"This proposal isn't the final budget because the final budget needs input from [the commissioners]," Boedeker said. "That's why we're meeting throughout this week.

"As of today this is my budget. As of Friday, this will be you all's budget. We're going to be in this thing together so this is just the starting point."

Work on the budget began earlier this year as goals for the budget as laid out by commissioners, received consideration by an ad hoc budget committee.

County elected officials and department heads prepared their budgets in March after which they met with the budget committee who reviewed their requests, Boedeker said.

The county budget coordinator in June compiled a rough draft of all the data collected to help form Boedeker's proposed budget.

"On July 25, the certified tax rolls were completed," Boedeker said. "Thats when we had an opportunity to begin projecting revenues and trying to make determinations of what we can afford to do this year."

The budget goals as determined included calls for no tax increases.

The budget as proposed calls for a 6% COLA for current employees and equalization of pay across like positions to adjust situations of several county employees doing essentially the same jobs with like experience but at noticeable salary differences.

"It's a tough job market and this budget emphasizes the importance of taking care of our employees, the folks we already have here," Boedeker said.

The proposed budget calls for modest hiring of new positions, about six new employees.

"As the county grows we're obviously going to need new people," Boedeker said. "But we have to do that in a responsible and restrained manner."

The budget also calls for moving the 10 or so employees now paid by American Rescue Plan Act funds to being paid by the county's general fund instead.

ARPA money consists of federal dollars distributed to cities and other governmental entities to assist and mitigate with costs associated with the Covid-19 pandemic and mitigation efforts of the same.

The county must spend their ARPA funds by the end of next year after which any costs, including ARPA-funded employee salaries, become the county's responsibility.

The proposed budget slightly decreases the amount of tax dollars funneled into the county's general fund in order to increase the Farm to Market Lateral Road Fund from 4.6 cents per $100 to 5 cents per $100.

"Which dedicates additional money to road repairs and maintenance," Boedeker said.

The increase will bring about $1.2 million in additional funding for road and bridge repair and maintenance increasing the FMLR fund from about $8.7 million this year to about $9.9 million next year.

About half of that cost will come from the increased contribution to the fund while increased values from new construction will fund the rest.

The general fund tax revenues, about $66.1 million this year, should increase to about $69.8 million next year, Boedeker said.

"What that means is we would be taking about $625,000 in property taxes from existing properties than we did last year," Boedeker said. "Then $4.2 million from all the new construction you see all around you is funding everything new we're doing in this budget. Everything in terms of an increase, more than 100% of the increase is funded by new construction."

The proposed budget calls for about $1 million in new vehicle purchases, about the amount the county spends on vehicles each year. Most of those vehicles will be for the sheriff's and constable's offices though several will be for other departments.

Given that ARPA money funded the current year's vehicle purchases, the proposed budget shifts $900,000 from the general fund to a vehicle purchase fund since the county will no longer be able to rely on ARPA funding.

The proposed budget maintains sufficient reserve funs and remains conservative, Boedeker said.

"We want to budget conservatively, budget our expenses out of our general fund," Boedeker said. "We don't want to count on potential grants or growing our way into revenue to pay for things we're doing in the new budget year."

Animal shelter

Commissioner Rick Bailey broached one subject not under consideration within the upcoming budget.

"Not this year, but we're going to have to face it down the road and soon," Bailey said. "A woman was mauled by a stray dog recently and I continue to get more and more calls. With all the growth going on, an animal shelter is something we definitely need to start discussing and it's not a topic we can skate around in the future."

Commissioner Mike White agreed.

"There's been talk of an animal shelter for years, but we're getting to the point where we need to look at that," White said.

Bailey, although he didn't delve into details, said he's already reached out to several cities within the county to try to come up with a solution to the animal shelter challenge.

Commissioners plan to field budget requests from county elected officials and department heads throughout the rest of the week. The clock ticks on though as the court has to file a final proposed budget by Tuesday.

"We want to meet the needs of our growing county without overextending our resources as to conservative budgeting," Boedeker said. "We're a service organization and we have to do a good job for the people we serve. We want small government but we want to do it right."