Jackson County Executive Jim Morgan said the county has a new budget in place, a long, but smooth process resulted in no property tax increase.
Morgan said the budget committee took its time to verify the numbers, especially with the passing of Mayor Randy Heady coming around the start of the process. Morgan said the tax rate will remain at $2.55 for this year. Rates could be cut with next year’s property reappraisal.
“It should give us a little extra revenue next year because of the way they calculate that,” Morgan said. “And some of the tax relief they give to some of the companies with that. So they won’t get the discount next year with the reappraisal year, so we should end, see a little increase.”
Morgan said eligible employees will receive a three percent raise with an additional one percent in longevity pay.
Morgan said this year’s revenue is some $8.9 million, with $9.2 million in expenditures budgeted. Morgan said the $300,000 gap will be covered from the county fund balance. Morgan said the fund balance is healthy right now, there are currently some $3 million in reserves.
Morgan said there were increases in the budget this year as always. He said the budget factored in requests made by department heads early in the process.
“We always get an increase in data processing for our computer programs that we use to run the office and things like that,” Morgan said. “We tried to give as many things as we could that they’ve asked for and we did some. We couldn’t do all, but we did some.”
Morgan said one of the areas of the budget with a smaller than expected price tag was funding for capital projects. Morgan said there were not a lot of new projects in the plans for this year, and the county was not paying for most of the work that is underway.
“We’re still spending some of the rescue money finishing some of the things we got on,” Morgan said. “We’ve got some grants that are outgoing, water line projects and stuff like that.”
Morgan said an airport hangar project was recently finished, and it was covered by a grant. Morgan said the county has not started much of anything else.
