By Wayne Gates
The 2020 budget for Brown County is described by commissioners as “growing but still tight.”
The budget was approved by the Brown County Commissioners at a special meeting on Dec. 20.
The general fund expenses for 2020 are listed as $11,911,943.23, compared to 10,847,027.50 for 2019.
On the revenue side, the commissioners are estimating $4.2 million dollars in sales tax revenue, up from $3.8 million last year. A continued strong economy is credited with the higher revenue estimation.
On the expenses side, the commissioners appropriated almost $700,000 in additional spending. The majority of new spending is related to the 40 man addition and renovations to the Brown County Jail.
One new expense is an annual payment of $355,000 to pay for the construction. Another expense is an increase of almost $200,000 in additional corrections officer salaries to staff the new area of the jail.
The rest of the additional spending is spread out in the budget in higher utility costs and other rising expenses.
The additional spending was taken from the line iten for the reimbursement fund from the state when the Medicare Managed Sales Tax revenue was ended.
Brown County has about $1.9 million left in that fund and $600,000 in a reserve contingency fund for a total of about $2.5 million in unencumbered or “rainy day” funds.
Given the current budget numbers, Brown County can continue to fund the jail payment and additional corrections officer salaries for approximately two more years if revenue and expenses remain close to the same. After the Medicare Managed Sales Tax reimbursement fund is depleted, the county will have to cut spending if sales tax revenue does not increase.
If sales tax numbers do better than expected, the county will have to use less of the reimbursement fund to fill in the gaps.
“I believe that the strong economy will continue through this election year. I think 2020 will be a good year for the local economy,” said Brown County Commission President Tony Applegate.
Applegate said that $100,000 was budgeted from the reimbursement fund in 2019, but that money was not needed because the economy performed better than expected.
“We hope to use as little of that $600,000 as we can this year. We have to allocate it because we are required to pass a balanced budget,” Applegate said.
Regarding the $2.5 million dollars in unincumbered funds, Applegate said “That sounds like a lot of money, but it’s really not when you compare it to the size of our budget. When you look at the amount of square footage we have under roof that the county is responsible for, that amount of money can go pretty quickly if we have some sort of disaster strike us.”
Applegate also took time to thank other elected officials for their work in 2019 to remain fiscally responsible.
“I feel like we are doing the best we can with what we have with our budget,” Applegate said. “And by ‘we’, I mean other elected officials who have been very good about finding grants and other revenue sources as well as managing their budgets very responsibly.”
