The Carroll County Board of Supervisors adopted their Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 budget Monday morning after a public hearing. Auditor, Kourtney Irlbeck, says that the overall levy will be decreasing this year for both urban and rural sectors. That, coupled with an increase in property valuations will result in an increase in revenue for the county.
Neil Bock says that a long-range look at these levies shows a definite trend.
Bock says valuations rose by $67 million, and that is probably the biggest reason that they were able to lower the levy. Irlbeck adds that though the levy is decreasing, there is no way to say how each individual property owner will be impacted because of the recent roughly 7 percent increase in assessed values.
The urban levy will decrease by 7.6 percent while the rural levy will drop 1.16 percent. Irlbeck reports the estimated ending fund balance at the end of FY 2019 will be just short of $5.14 million, down from just over $6.98 million at the beginning of the year. This includes transfers from Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) of $212,000 to the general fund and $305,000 to the supplemental levy fund to eliminate that levy. Employee askings were down from years past and supervisors agreed that staff deserves recognition for taking on new services, maintaining the high quality of others and still keeping expenses low. A link to the budget that was approved and adopted can be found below.
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