Floyd County sets final budget hearing with 8.6% property tax increase

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County Board of Supervisors essentially finished up budget work for the new fiscal year at the regular meeting Monday morning.

The board set a public hearing for 4:45 p.m. on Monday, March 28, for final comments on the fiscal year 2022-23 budget before approving it and certifying it to the state. That meeting will be in the EOC room in the new law enforcement center.

The budget calls for collecting a total of $8.815 million in property taxes in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. That’s an 8.6% increase from the amount being collected in the current fiscal year, but that’s partly because the county didn’t collect as much as it planned to this year because of a error in a taxing resolution last year.

The total property taxes collected in the county for last fiscal year, the current fiscal year and the next fiscal year average a 3.3% annual increase.

The county property tax rate per $1,000 of taxable valuation will be $6.913 for all property in the county. That’s an 11.4% percent increase from the $6.207 per $1,000 rate in the current year.

People who own property in the rural unincorporated areas of the county will pay an additional rural services rate of $3.650 per $1,000, meaning rural property owners will pay a total county rate of $10.563 per $1,000, which is a 10.5% increase over the current rate.

The county property tax rate is only a portion of the total property tax bill property owners pay. For rural property tax owners, it’s a large part of their bill. For some city property owners, it’s a smaller part. For example, the Charles City property tax levy proposed for next fiscal year is $16.20 per $1,000 of taxable valuation.

An additional large part of the total property tax bill goes to whichever school district the property is in. For example, the Charles City School District is proposing collecting $13.06 per $1,000 of taxable valuation in property taxes during the next fiscal year.

Supervisor Linda Tjaden said she was glad they were able to reduce the property tax asking from what has been proposed at the “maximum tax” public hearing, mostly by using available federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for significant expenditures.

Board members talked about a couple of other cuts they might make, but County Auditor Gloria Carr pointed out that the cuts mentioned are in the general fund, which is at the maximum $3.50 rate. The relatively minor spending cuts the board was thinking about would not reduce that levy rate, but would increase the carry-over amount in that fund at the end of the fiscal year.

That’s the kind of technical issue that the board has to deal with as it goes through the months-long budget process each year, Tjaden said.

After two contentious meetings where a group of county residents spent upwards of two hours accusing the supervisors of not doing their jobs in controlling spending, the board members spent a little time Monday venting their own frustration, although this time to almost no audience.

“Those are just things you have to think through, but we have to say that to the general public, too, so that they understand. We know this, but the general public wouldn’t understand that,” Tjaden said.

Supervisor Roy Schwickerath noted that some people in previous meetings said the board hadn’t looked closely enough at the budget, but they don’t realize the supervisors go through each department line by line.

“We don’t do that at a public meeting, we don’t go through line by line, but we have already done that,” he said.

Tjaden said she also wanted to take exception to comments that the county department budgets contained a lot of “fluff.”

“When those statements are being made I needed to come back today and just make the statement that I really think our department heads have done a good job,” she said. “They have historical information on what they’ve used on every single line item over year, over year, over year,” so there isn’t more being budgeted than is needed.

She also addressed a statement that was made that department heads go on a buying spree at the end of the fiscal year to spend every dollar they have available so that their budgets won’t be cut in the next year.

“I’m not seeing it. We get the claims. I’m just not seeing it now,” she said.

Kamm said that budgets are tight and departments are nearly out of money at the end of the year, “and nobody has misspent.”

Kamm also said that, for example, both the Public Health Department and Secondary Roads Department were at about half the staff level they were at years ago.

Also at the meeting Monday, the board:

• Discussed several law enforcement center and courthouse update expenses that will be paid for with ARPA money. The county will purchase new video cameras for monitoring the courthouse because the current cameras are out of compliance and will not meet the specifications needed for cyber security insurance. It will also purchase door access readers so dispatchers can get into the dispatch area without having to be buzzed in by someone inside the center, in case only one person is working and is busy on a call. And the board discussed quotes for increasing the size of the small courtroom to allow greater distance separation.

• Approved new County Engineer Jacob Page hiring two secondary roads employees to fill two vacancies. The board discussed with Page if both positions were needed, but Kamm also said that a supervisor had been driving a snow plow frequently during the winter when there was just one vacancy.