Floyd County supervisors continue to discuss budget, with few decisions

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County Board of Supervisors spent most of a Tuesday morning meeting continuing discussion of the county budget for the upcoming 2025-26 fiscal year, again starting off focusing on employee wage and salary increases until realizing that the total impact of those figures is relatively small compared to the county’s $18 million budget.

At last week’s meeting, the board had approved setting 8:30 a.m. Monday, March 24, for a state-required public hearing regarding the maximum amount of tax the county will collect in the next fiscal year.

As part of the public notice of that hearing the county had to show how the potential tax asking in the next fiscal year compares with the current year.

Because of rising valuation, an increase in the state’s property tax rollback figure and more taxes being collected, the maximum property tax increase was listed on the form as 12.6% for people living in the cities and 12.3% for people living in rural areas of the county.

Even though they are working to keep any increase well below that amount, the supervisors said they have already been hearing from people concerned about that possible increase.

One target is to cut $222,000 in spending, to keep next year’s property tax collection at the same amount as this year.

Supervisor Gloria Carr pointed out that $12,000 is debt service for the new county public service communications project and that amount can’t be cut, so if that’s the way the board wants to proceed maybe the target should be $210,000 in reductions.

The three supervisors spent quite a while talking about departments that had requested pay increases for some or all of their employees that were greater than the 2.75% that the county had agreed to with the unionized Secondary Roads Department employees and that the board had asked departments to use as a base for other county employee increases.

At one point in the meeting, after having talked about wages for 45 minutes, Supervisor Boyd Campbell asked what it would mean to move everyone to a 2.75% increase – “carte blanche” – to see what impact that would have.

County Auditor Morrigan Miller and Supervisor Gloria Carr ran the numbers.

Miller has been the auditor since Jan. 1, having been elected to replace Carr, who had been county auditor for 20 years but who ran for and was elected as a supervisor in the November election. Supervisor Chair Dennis Keifer is in his third year as a supervisor and Campbell is in his first year as a supervisor.

Carr has frequently been taking a lead role in guiding Miller and the other supervisors through the budget process.

After figuring what it would mean to give all county employees a 2.5% pay increase instead of the increases that had been requested, Miller announced that the impact would be $37,388.02.

Carr said, “That’s the thing. We’re spending so much time on wages, and we can see that’s not moving the dial very much.”

She said it’s difficult to balance a budget based just on reducing wage increases.

“Obviously you can’t even do it,” she said.

The supervisors have agreed they don’t want to cut employees, citing the situation in Chickasaw County where county jobs are being reduced and saying they need to come up with ways to avoid that, but they haven’t identified any other areas where reductions would have a large impact in the budget.

No firm decisions were made at the meeting this week.

County budgets must be turned in to the state by the end of April. With public notice requirements for the final budget hearing, likely at the meeting on Monday, April 28, or Tuesday, April 29, the budget will need to be in final form by April 14, Carr said.

Also at the meeting Tuesday morning, the Supervisors:

• Discussed a discrepancy with an agreement made several years ago with Cerro Gordo County. That county’s County Attorney’s Office had agreed to do the work collecting delinquent court obligations in Floyd County in return for 90% of the amount collected. Previously Floyd County had been collecting almost nothing on these delinquent accounts.

Cerro Gordo County recently contacted Floyd County saying that $56,000 had come to Floyd County that should have gone to Cerro Gordo.

Carr said it’s likely the money was sent to the Floyd County Clerk of Court’s Office, where it was entered as a delinquent debt payment and went into the general fund.

She said Floyd County Attorney Todd Prichard is having his office audit the payments to determine what happened and how much is owed to Cerro Gordo County.

• Held a special meeting separate from the regular meeting to canvass the results of a special election held last week on Tuesday, March 4, for voters in the Central Springs School District and the North Butler School District who live in Floyd County to help decide whether or not to approve a physical plant and equipment levy (PPEL) in those districts.

Floyd County voters added 167 yes votes and 56 no votes to Central Springs passing the levy, and added one yes vote and five no votes to North Butler turning down the levy.

• Discussed changing the regular weekly meeting day from Monday to Tuesday. The meeting next week will still be held on Monday because the county’s wind and battery project moratorium ends on that date and the board will likely extend it. Most future meetings may be held on Tuesdays at 9 a.m. in the boardroom on the ground floor of the courthouse.