The Brown County Council has managed to cut nearly $850,000 from what county department heads requested for 2018.
Next month, the council will vote on approving all of the budgets and changes.
The county’s total 2018 budget with the changes is $17,070,442. About $5.3 million of that is going to wages, including three new jobs the council approved last month.
The adopted total budget for 2017 was $15,132,637.
Brown County Auditor Beth Mulry said the cuts from 2018 budget requests were a result of county government trying to “live within our revenues.”
“They needed to get down to that number that would get us under the tax levy,” she said.
“I only have a couple of years to go by (in office), but in my experience, I think it’s safe to say we’re generally cutting to try to make our budget. I have not yet seen a year where we didn’t have to cut something.”
Reductions were made to department budgets and funds that receive property tax money.
The biggest changes were to funds the county commissioners control.
The commissioners had $240,000 cut from their proposals: $160,000 from the $960,000 slated for group health insurance, and $70,000 cut from the proposed $100,000 for professional services, like engineering and financial planning.
Not every department is seeing reductions in what they asked for.
A raise is actually budgeted for most county employees.
All jobs with a pay grade, public defenders, chief deputy and deputy coroners, county commissioners and county council members will receive a 3-percent raise if the council votes to adopt the 2018 salary ordinance at their October meeting.
“That’s actually a fairly high raise for the county,” Mulry said.
“It’s what they shoot for, but there’s been years we’ve gotten much less than that. There’s been years we’ve gotten no raise.”
County council members’ pay will go from $4,944 for 2017 to $5,114 in 2018. The three county commissioners will receive $15,208 in 2018 compared to $14,708 in 2017.
Multiple offices submitted pay grade changes, which are levels of base pay people receive in certain jobs. Those requests will not be considered until after a thorough salary study is completed later this year.
Contracts, employees
Creating three new government jobs was proposed during budget hearings — one full-time and two part-time.
James T. Roberts, of the Brown County Public Defender Board, said the county “seriously” needs a fourth public defender due to the increase in criminal case filings. The workload has doubled since 2015, he said.
Many of those filings have to do with CHINS cases, or children in need of services. The increase in workload is causing the three current public defenders to max out their time, Roberts said.
“We run the risk of there being a federal lawsuit brought against us for failing to provide the indigent with adequate representation,” he said.
The council approved hiring a fourth public defender to serve the county beginning in 2018, but it’s unclear if that person will be an independent contractor or a county employee. Pay was set at $33,015 a year.
Brown County public defenders used to be independent contractors who were eligible for benefits, Mulry said. One issue that was brought to light during budget discussions was that, over time, some public defenders were on the county’s payroll and others were not.
“When they’re in payroll, we are paying employee taxes on it. Now they are all on payroll and we’re paying employee taxes on them,” Mulry said.
What needs to be remedied now is whether to classify the public defenders as independent contractors or employees. “They need to be one or the other,” she said.
The three current public defenders are on track to receive a $957.90 raise, along with longevity bonuses and extra hours.
The council also approved a new part-time court employee to help with electronic case filing requirements that take effect in January, Brown Circuit Judge Judith Stewart said. That new employee will make $16,460 a year.
The Veterans Affairs Office — which is run by one person, Ron Higgins — also asked for a part-time assistant at $14,500 a year, but that person would not be eligible for benefits.
“Getting a new position is a very hard thing to do, and I think that council really saw a need to have grown our employee count,” Mulry said.
Other cuts
During budget hearings in August, $240,000 was cut from the county’s cumulative capital development fund because spending was exceeding revenue, Mulry said.
The biggest cut to that fund came from the buildings line, which was reduced from a proposal of $250,000 to $50,000. Brown County commissioner Diana Biddle said the commissioners didn’t have a specific project in mind for that money.
The Brown County Fair Board also had asked the county council for $45,000 — $10,000 more than what it had been receiving — to help cover insurance, mowing and grandstand repair costs.
The council approved $35,000, because the county plans to absorb the mowing and insurance costs. The county also is looking into getting a loan to possibly fix the grandstand and make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Despite all the cuts, there still is $1.5 million in the county’s rainy day fund, which is like a savings account with a variety of possible uses. But that’s money that should be left for emergency situations, Mulry said.
“When you look at a $17 million budget and you only have $1.5 (million), that’s not even 10 percent. I like to leave it alone as much as we can,” she said.
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The Nashville Town Council plans to approve a 2018 budget that’s nearly identical to this year’s, despite a projected drop in assessed value and income tax.
To fill the gap, town leaders trimmed back the 2017 general fund budget by about $60,000, will dip into cash reserves as needed, and might be pushing some longer-term capital planning back a bit.
“The good news is, we’re still the same. Our AV didn’t go up,” Nashville Clerk-Treasurer Brenda Young told the council Sept. 14.
“The bad news is, we can’t find any other funds within this budget for what we talked about, like the fire department or any other funding, because our levy didn’t go up.”
The town’s budget is $1.8 million — not counting the water and sewer departments, whose budgets aren’t ready yet — but only $449,456 of it is coming from property taxes. The rest comes from income taxes, food and beverage taxes, fees, donations and grants.
The town s within $51 of its maximum levy, or the maximum amount it can charge in property taxes by state law.
The general fund is the largest fund, at $709,666 for 2018. It pays for salaries and benefits; contracts like attorneys, accounting, insurance and fire protection; police vehicles and the police station; and other expenses.
For 2017, the general fund total had been $767,509.
The town’s hired budget consultant, at the end of August, told the town council that the net assessed value of property had gone down for 2018 and so had income tax collections; so in order to maintain the recommended level of cash reserves, it would be wise to cut the budget back.
Consultant Paige Sansone, from accounting firm Umbaugh & Associates, had been asked to help the town plan for capital expenses coming up within the next five years.
Assessed value of property in town — a figure used to calculate property taxes — dropped by $318,689, Young said.
Among the three income tax funds, revenue is projected to drop by $20,534 for 2018.
“We’re doing our best to cut, cut, cut and still be able to operate,” Young said.
Sansone said two factors could cause income tax receipts to go down: People moving out of the county — which she didn’t think was the reason in this case — or another taxing entity in the county raising its tax levy.
“There’s one pot of money, and if your tax levy goes up, you’re going to get a larger piece of that pie and somebody else is going to get a smaller piece of the pie,” she said.
“So I suspect that’s what happened … because we’re seeing these (local income tax receipts) go up all over the state.”
Overall, the town’s budget is in good shape, though, Young and Sansone said.
Looking ahead, the consultant told the council that it has the ability to issue general obligation bonds for needed projects — up to $419,000 worth. However, that would result in a tax increase.
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