Apr. 11—OTTUMWA — By dipping into some of its carryover balance while also navigating difficult waters resulting from state legislative bills, Wapello County is ready to certify its fiscal year 2025 budget Tuesday.
The county's maximum levy will be $9.95, which is less than what was established at a public hearing two weeks ago, but a 56-cent increase from the previous year.
However, the levy rose because of the state clawing back 3% of the county's over 6% in valuations gains, as well as the increased costs of insurance payouts. Increasing costs and lower valuation revenue forced the county to make a larger ask for its levy. In a sense, supervisor Brian Morgan said, it was about as good as the county could do for the next budget.
"However, you lower your levies, it has to come out of your carryover balance. And I thought, 'What if we use $500,000 of our carryover supplemental balance?'" Morgan said. "That would have taken us down to like a 20-cent increase, and we could have done that.
"But, that would have put our carryover balance down below $2 million. We need close to $2 million just to pay our bills for the first three months of the year."
Two of the levies that make up the $9.95 — the general basic and rural basic — were reduced as a direct result of House File 718 and the valuation reduction measure in the law. That left the county with only about $240,000 in new money.
Morgan, who has been critical of the bill, believes it was unnecessary for the counties that had been responsible with their budgets, as it aims to bring all counties to a $3.50 general levy by fiscal year 2029. The county slashed its general levy by a dime to $3.40 and rural by six cents to $2.95.
"I understand why HF 718 was passed, and I don't even necessarily think they were wrong. I'm also not picking on counties that are over the $3.50 levy now because they know their budgets better than us," he said. "But this isn't something that just happened in the last couple years. In all those counties over $3.50, their valuations aren't good. They're the poorest of your counties, but they still have to provide services.
"So, how could you have worked with those counties to get that levy back down?" Morgan said, "as opposed to just saying, 'We're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and everyone is going to be cut.'"
On the flip side, Morgan explained, if the county's valuation increases by less than 3% next year, it could be allowed to go back to $3.50, and he said he knows where that leads, which is why he's not eager to get back there immediately.