Taxpayers will see little change on their county property tax bills issued in December. When they view their bills for 2015, there will be no evidence of the funding crisis facing the county in the future.
Oconto County will use nearly $4 million from its reserves to balance its 2015 budget, a practice the county administrative coordinator said is unsustainable.
“We used over $2 million for operations. That’s dangerous, because operations are continuous each and every year,” Kevin Hamann said.
The county also used $1.85 million from its fund balance for one-time items.
“That $2 million does scare me, and we’ve been doing this for a couple of years,” Hamann told the audience at Thursday’s budget hearing. The county has relied on funds from the highway and health and human services departments to balance its budget. For 2015, the county applied money from the general fund for the first time in several years.
“We have no debt, and we did retain all our essential levels of service, but again, it’s because we used fund balance to do so,” Hamann said.
To prepare for the future, Hamann allocated $5,000 for a strategic planning process involving the department heads and County Board supervisors.
“We need your input as ‘How do we proceed?’ because we’re not going to be able to continue as is. We need to put some priorities together as to what we’re going to fund,” he said.
Amid warnings for future budgets, the County Board concentrated on the present budget, which Hamann described as “status quo.” Department heads were asked to keep operating costs the same as 2014.
The 2015 budget expenditures of $44.6 million are 1.2 percent less than 2014 expenditures of $45.2 million, due to a decrease in the contingency budget.
Revenues also were down from 2014, because of a decrease in land conservation grants and highway project funding and lower register of deeds fee collections. Revenues for 2015 are projected at $22.5 million, 2.3 percent less than $23 million in 2014.
Supervisors on Thursday adopted a tax levy of $18.3 million, which is less than a 1 percent increase over the 2014 levy of $18.1 million. The tax rate, however, decreased. The 2015 tax rate of $5.196 is less than 1 percent lower than the 2014 tax rate of $5.227.
“The reason it’s going down, even though the levy is going up is because for the first time in five years, the equalized value went up,” Hamann said. “Hopefully that will continue.”
Equalized value increased $42 million or 1.2 percent for 2015.
About 81 percent of the tax levy is committed to three departments, which Hamann referred to as the Big 3: sheriff, health and human services, and highway.
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