Aug. 2—With tax roll numbers officially in, the Johnson County Commissioners Court on Monday went to work on the nuts and bolts business of formulating a budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
The hope going in, County Judge Roger Harmon said, is to cut the property tax rate and increase employee pay. To what degree either can be accomplished remains to be determined. Commissioners spent much of Monday's meeting combing line by line through requests from county department heads for employee pay increases and/or new employees.
Several factors complicate attempts to address both.
"I call this attacking the beast," Harmon said. "The good part is that our tax rolls this year look very good. The negative part is that inflation has become a large player in everyone's budget. Inflation has always been there but we've never really had to deal with it like we have this year.
"With all that said, my hope is that we as a court can do some good things for our employees and lower the tax rate. I don't know yet if either is doable. Our numbers are up but inflation is up too."
Complicating matters further are state guidelines — guidelines most of the court characterize as state interference — dictating county budget implementation.
"Our good state legislature tries to run county government from Austin," Harmon said. "They control everything. They don't take into account inflation and other things."
Competition from other counties, cities and private enterprise brings yet another challenge in the form of employee retention and the county's ability to hire new employees. Combatting such, Personnel Director Randy Gillespie said, requires competitive pay and benefits on the county's part.
To that end, Harmon noted that Johnson Count has increased employee pay by 13 percent over the past three years, a figure Commissioner Larry Woolley labeled only partially accurate.
Commissioners increased employee pay 3 percent in 2019 and 5 percent in 2020. The 2021 increase included a 3 percent raise coupled with a 2 percent fund going or not going to employees at the discretion of individual department heads.
Woolley also cautioned against American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA funds, being used to offset portions of this year's budget.
ARPA funds — federal funds distributed to governmental entities to mitigate and/or offset costs related to Covid-19 — may not be used toward employee salaries. They may be used for various equipment purchases such as vehicles and commissioners have already done just that.
"We have to keep in mind that these ARPA funds are a one-time deal and we're not going to have those next year," Woolley said. "We don't want to create a false sense of being able to purchase extra vehicles every year."
Woolley suggested focusing on employee pay increases first and foremost before considering equipment and other purchase requests.
"With inflation at an all-time high, employees are where we need to start and work from there," Woolley said.
Commissioner Rick Bailey urged caution.
"Our employees are priority one," Bailey said. "But I'm not sure if we need to start there, get peoples' hopes up then, once we get to the bottom line, find out we might have to cut back."
Commissioner Mike White agreed that employees should come first but admitted that hopes of pay increases against the reality of county fund balances makes for a challenging balancing act.
Although commissioners made no official decisions during Monday's meeting, they did work through the list of personnel requests from the county departments to provisionally approve and disapprove various salary increase and new hire requests. Final decisions on such matters the whole budget, with equipment and other purchases, has been finalized.
Harmon suggested a 5 percent increase across the board for all employees plus an additional $1,000 to help offset inflation. Others on the court suggested that the increase should match the inflation rate, which is higher than 5 percent.
Tax rate
Commissioners, Bailey especially, stressed that the court sets the property tax rate for Johnson County, but has no control over property appraisal or valuation rates. Those stem from the Central Appraisal District and state legislative rules determining the way the state's system of property tax works, County Tax Assessor/Collector Scott Porter said.
"The public is fed up with taxes, we know that," Harmon said. "They know it's a necessary expense, but they expect us to spend wisely and I think we as a court have always done that. But everyone's been hit with tremendous property tax increases. We can do our part locally [on the tax rate] and work with state leaders on urging them to lower school tax rates.
Bailey noted that, since he came on the court in 2009, county tax rates have gone from 36 cents per $100 of property valuation to 48 cents then back down to their current level of 42 cents.
A decrease in mineral values several years ago from about $3 billion to about $400 million necessitated the increases though commissioners have since lowered the rate steadily to its current level thanks in large part to continued county growth. The hope is to lower that 42 cent rate in the coming fiscal year if possible, commissioners said.
"When we could give money back to the taxpayers we did," Harmon said. "When we couldn't we didn't. But through it all this court has been very responsive to taxpayers."
And among the lowest tax rates in the state, Woolley said.
"We're in the lowest 25 percent quartile out of 254 counties in the state," Woolley said.
