Tax Levy Hearing Held in Jefferson County

By Gordon Hopkins Monday evening, September 26, was the last opportunity members of the public had to give input before tax levies for both Jefferson County and Tri County Schools were set. A joint hearing was held at the 4-H building in the Jefferson County Fairgrounds.Sixteen members of the public were in attendance.Tri County SchoolsSuperintendent Dr. Tiffany Welte represented Tri County Schools. She indicated the proposed tax request for the school was $6,669,476. Tri County’s budget will exceed last year’s by 4.2 percent.Dr. Welte said, “I did want to make sure that you understand some of the priorities that the Tri County Public Schools Board discussed as part of our budget workshop and budget hearing process that we had prior to tonight's meeting. One of those is to absolutely recognize the continued tax burden on property owners. We're all taxpayers ourselves and we understand that increase in any taxes is a burden on all families. So, we wanted to make sure that we recognize that as best as we possibly could, also while we maintain financial programs and support that best meets the interests of our students and staff at Tri County Public Schools.” Welte added, “We also want to make sure that with the budget that we're proposing this year and the resulting tax levy and tax requests that we are ensuring financial security for our district, by utilizing the funds that we do have in a fiscally responsible manner, and maintaining a cash reserves so that we do not have to borrow during lean revenue time periods as well. So those are some of the goals that we had with our budget planning this year.”Jefferson CountyMark Schoenrock, chairman of the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners, represented the county.The county’s proposed tax request was $7,640,157, of which $330,000 is for the PWF Road bond and $739,000 is for Ambulance District #33.Jefferson County will be seeing an increase of 4.66 percent in the tax levy.Property taxes are an especially contentious issue in Nebraska. With continuing rising costs, commissioners have stressed for several months that they had exactly two options: raise the tax levy or cut services.“And we went through a very detailed, very specific review of the budget, line by line. And we believe that we have developed a good budget that will continue to provide the same level of service to our citizens. I talked to probably well over 100 people. There are constituents of mine in my district and I asked them, if you want to cut something, what do you want to cut?” said Schoenrock. “Nobody wants their roads maintained less frequently. Nobody wants less law enforcement. Nobody wants less ambulance service. Nobody wants the courthouse to be closed, they want instantaneous service, nobody wanted to cut any level of service.”Commissioners met with department heads over the past several weeks. Schoenrock said, “Each department and elected official comes to the board with a presentation. And from those presentations, we did cut certain things. But we believe that we're maintaining the same level of service.”County ReserveWhile the tax rated increased by 4.66 percent, Schoenrock indicated overall expenses have actually increased well beyond that, “Our costs depending on what department you're looking at, went up an average of 10 to 12 percent. So, you might ask yourself, well, how did we maintain the same level of service, but yet not increase the budget 10 to 12 percent? We took out a fairly substantial amount out of the county's reserve.”“Each county government in the state of Nebraska maintains a certain reserve level for emergencies. You can call it a rainy-day fund,” Schoenrock explained. “And so, we took out a fairly substantial level from that reserve to apply to the budget, so that we did not have to raise the levy rate as much.”City Councilperson Doug Brown was in attendance. He said, “I find that ironic, Fairbury Public Schools, the City of Fairbury, most families and businesses in this county have lowered their budgets, but you can't.”Ambulance ServiceOf the 93 counties in Nebraska, Jefferson is the only one that operates its own ambulance service.Brown asked, “What are the chances that the other 92 counties are wrong?”One individual attending the meeting, Mike Slater, who owns property in Jefferson County but lives in Kansas, warned, “I live in a county that is volunteer. They can't find enough volunteers to man the ambulances. So, they're not running. And they're going to go to a county ambulance system that they say will cost us $1.7 million a year. So please don't complain about your ambulance service. Because you're far better off than a whole lot of people.”It is unknown at this time how much going to a private firm or volunteer would save the county or impact response times. Commissioner are looking at other options.“Hamilton (County) had it like us until recently. And they've gone into an arrangement with the hospital in Aurora,” said Schoenrock. “We're seeing maybe if that's a model that we might be able to follow here. I don't know, but it's probably something we're going to have to look into a little bit further.”Unfunded MandatesThe hearing was being held because Legislative Bill (LB) 644 requires hearings for the public whenever the need to raise the property tax arises. The bill is also sometimes called the “Postcard Bill” because, according to the bill’s statement of intent, “LB644 requires a postcard be mailed to all constituents in relation to the political subdivisions request for higher levy rates than cannot exceed the previous years request.”While the stated intent was to create greater transparency, it also created additional costs for the county and provided no way to pay for them. Local government entities have repeatedly expressed frustration over unfunded mandates, the term for laws, regulations or other requirements imposed by a higher level of government on a lower one, but without accompanying appropriations to cover the cost of compliance, because local governments end up footing the bill.The cost of the postcards was estimated by the county to cost approximately $8,000.The next day, commissioners met to approve the budget and tax levy. Commissioners Gale Pohlmann asked, “In your evaluation, was it worth the $8,000?”Schoenrock said, “I don't think that it was worth what the county spent for all the pink cards, for having 16 people come.”

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