During Monday’s County Council meeting, County Auditor Julie Fox gave members financial information in preparation for the 2019 budget hearings next week on Tuesday, August 21st.
Fox said the estimated civil maximum levy will be $9,538,324.00. The loss from the property tax caps is an estimated $559,777.00 while the estimated property tax revenue is $6,775,768.00. The General Fund estimated revenue total is $13,397,784. She said these are preliminary number but she was pretty confident in them.
Fox also said the 2019 General Fund current budget requests are at $14,176,945.00 which does include an across the board 4% raise for county employees and elected officials.
The County Auditor asked council members if they wanted her to add an additional amount in a separate category in the Council’s budget to offset the additional salary increases recommended by Waggoner Irwin & Scheele after completing the Job Classification and Compensation study.
On Friday the Council held a workshop to review all the material presented by Waggoner Irwin & Scheele. The bottom line was a recommendation to bring all positions up to the external midpoint salaries. To implement that recommendation the council would need approximately $550,000. The council agreed to have a special line item in their budget in case they feel they can start implementing the increases. It was noted that some increases are rather large and that they may need to implement them over of few years rather than all at once.
