Washington County asks organizations to request less money. Most don’t.

WASHINGTON — Weeks after asking all departments to trim their operating budgets by 5% in the coming fiscal year, Washington County officials have extended the directive to area organizations that annually make their own funding requests to the local government. Few have heeded the suggestion.

The rush to reduce spending stems from a state-mandated tax cut — passed in a bill titled House File 718 last spring — which requires Washington County to reduce its property tax rate from $4.50 to $3.50 per $1,000 of taxable valuation starting July 1, 2028.

Decision-makers plan to start trimming expenses early in preparation for the change.

Board of Supervisors Chair Richard Young said the county would likely accept any funding request for an organization offering to work with less than it currently gets, but might make less voluntary reduction to those who offered no curtailment of their own.

“I think if they come in and cut, then we’ll take it, but if they don’t, then we’ll look at it very hard and make a decision,” Young said. “We don’t have to do those this year, but we’d kind of like to get people in the mindset of that happening.”

The political mood led area libraries to trim their collective budget request by 5% for the coming fiscal year.

While that would still net them more than the state-mandated minimum for library funding, Washington Library Director Cary Ann Siegfried said she hoped the effort would resonate with decision-makers.

“We’d certainly like to have the same amount as last year,” she said. “But I think, with the removal of the library levy, I think we’re very sensitive to the funding realities that are happening in both municipal and county governments. Or maybe we just follow instructions better.”

To date, no other organization in Washington County has submitted a funding request lower than last year’s for FY 25.

After the Washington County Fair Board submitted the same budget request it was granted in 2023, Supervisor Marcus Fedler said any non-mandatory funding to local groups was on the table when it came to possible spending cuts.

“We need to come up with $1.4 million in the next four years,” he said at a meeting Jan. 9. “That means we’ve got to come up with a way to sheer off about $400,000 this year, give or take, and the next four years, because of what the state has done.”

High-ups at several organizations said they were accustomed to an unwritten understanding that the county usually approves budget requests which don’t exceed the previous year’s dollar amount, a system that has kept the local government’s spending on the various nonprofits more or less flat over time despite inflation and supply chain issues that indirectly raised virtually any expense.

  Buy Photo

“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. “We’ve been receiving the same amount from the county since we’ve been requesting money.”

Others said they simply could not reduce their budgets without putting off top priorities.

Main Street Washington on Tuesday gave a brief presentation and requested $6,834 — the same it has received in every previous fiscal year of its existence, according to Director Samantha Meyer — for that very reason.

“We’re hoping for the same, at the very least, that we usually get,” she said in an interview days before the meeting. “We’ve never received an increase, so there’s not really anything to cut.”

Some groups simply hope to sell supervisors on their importance to the community.

The Washington Economic Development Group, led by Mary Audia, brought an impressive list of accomplishments to the board when it made its own request at a meeting in December, which, like others, asked for a repeat of last year’s funding.

“Being a taxpayer in the county, I want to see the best use of our funds for the most people, and I’m quite certain that’s what the supervisors visualize too,” Audia said in an interview. “It helps the county overall, the things we’ve accomplished in the last few years, so it’s definitely an investment that comes straight back to the county and the people that live in Washington County. So, we will continue on, but it will be more challenging, for sure, if they’re not able to fund our request.”

A few recipients of tax dollars are safe from the chopping block, with allocations to their causes legally mandated by state laws or preexisting contracts.

PAWS & More, an animal shelter in Washington, is among those. The organization has not formally presented its request to the board yet this year, but signed a legally binding agreement with the county and other local governments last year, which locks in the county’s financial support at a rate based on a rolling average of previous years. In FY 25, that will amount to $32,858.

“Our budget and funding amount for this fiscal year has already been set and agreed-upon,” Shelter Director Amber Talbot said. “We appreciate the agreements that were put in place last year. It makes it easy on everyone to have that in your budget, and plan on that, and not have to worry about what’s happening now, those insecurities.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com