The Carroll County Board of Supervisors has worked with County Auditor, Kourtney Irlbeck, to move into the next step of their Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 budgeting process, setting of their first public hearing. Irlbeck says she would feel more comfortable with going through the budget one more time before holding the first public meeting and publishing the proposed property tax levy.
Irlbeck says she had some changes yet to make on the Local Option Sales Tax (L.O.S.T.) fund to offset the mental health levy. New regulations from the Iowa Legislature last year have extended the filing deadline for budgets to March 31 in order to give governmental entities more time for their now required second public meeting.
One of the requests made by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office was to plan on the addition of another deputy in the next fiscal year as the first step to bringing staffing up to par with like-sized counties. This has been included in the proposed budget, but Supervisor, Neil Bock, says in a recent conversation with Sheriff Pingrey, he learned they are going to delay that hiring. Pingrey will be applying for a grant to assist with the new salary, and that cannot be awarded retroactively. They must wait until October to find out if they will be given any grant dollars and then they can move forward with the hiring process. Other key points in the budget have the rural tax rate moving from 7.72813 percent to 8.11954 percent and the urban rate from 4.21939 to 4.86296. Ending fund balances in FY 2021 are expected to go up in the general basic fund by more than $65,000 and to drop by almost $1,500 in the general supplemental, which includes an increase in mental health from $64,721 last year to $80,000 next. The county farm fund is predicted to have an ending balance over $766,000 and secondary roads up from nearly $767,000 to more than $870,000. A copy of the first budget draft can be found below.
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