Washington County approves FY 25 budget

WASHINGTON — Supervisors voted unanimously to approve a budget for the next fiscal year on Tuesday morning. The bottom line includes a higher tax asking than in previous years to the tune of about $1.965 million, despite pressure from the state legislature and some constituents pushing for lower spending.

The board also approved a 4% higher pay rate for elected officials in the same budget period, on a 4-1 vote with Supervisor Marcus Fedler voting no.

While the Fiscal Year 2025 countywide tax rate is technically lower than in FY 24, most property owners in Washington County will still owe the local government more money than they did last tax season, as valuations have risen faster than rollbacks have fallen.

Much of the county’s expected spending jump is fueled by capital projects, public safety investments, and paying back a four-year loan to finance high-dollar emergency service infrastructure like police cars and a communication tower.

Supervisor Jack Seward Jr. said he heard taxpayers’ concerns, but saw no other way forward as the bills come due for the emergency service equipment and a new IT position.

“We’re backed into a corner, we have to pay now or we will pay a lot more later,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that the economy is the way it is … it really comes down to, if you want to cut our budget more and more, it really comes down to (choosing) what services we now provide would you like to do without. Because that’s what it’s going to boil down to.”

In the monthslong budget planning process, supervisors tried several approaches to tighten the belt, asking organizations to request less funding and later directing county departments to slash their spending across the board.

Neither panned out as hoped.

Most of the local government’s agencies said in February they couldn’t reduce spending without cutting some service used by taxpayers, or laying off essential staff. While Washington County Public Health opted not to hire a replacement for a departing employee, others said their budget was already as low as it could go.

Few nonprofits, meanwhile, altered their funding requests, saying they either didn’t get the memo or planned to hold Washington County to a long-held unwritten agreement that supervisors wouldn’t complain as long as their requests never went up.

“The fact that (we’ve) never asked for an increase might have something to do with it,” said Washington County HACAP Operations Director RenElla Crawford in January, when interviewed about the organization’s funding request. “We’ve been receiving the same amount from the county since we’ve been requesting money.”

With more state-mandated tax cuts expected to kick in over the next several years, Seward said he wasn’t sure where else to reduce county spending.

Several of next year’s expenses are unforeseen items, like the replacement of a communications tower destroyed by a tornado in Wellman last year, and the cost of a new ambulance slated for delivery two years later than first expected, with payment due up receipt.

Even a complete severance from all non-mandatory funding for nonprofit groups like libraries, Main Street Washington and HACAP would save the county roughly $500,000 a year, far less than the almost $2 million increase approved on Tuesday.

“On the budget that we’re talking about here, it’s minuscule,” Seward said. “It’s going to have to be a big-ticket service. And I want to have a conversation with somebody that’s going to convince me which big-ticket service we’re going to do without. Otherwise, I don’t see where we can make significant cuts to what we have.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com