The 2022 county budget process is under way, with auditor Kevin Robinson’s recommended budget released late last week.
Robinson made the announcement at the Monday, Nov. 15 commission administrative session, noting the final budget must be approved before Jan. 10, 2022.
General areas addressed in the auditor’s proposed budget include revenues, expenditures and obligations. Next month, commissioners will issue their own recommended budget document.
In September, commissioners renewed the county property tax rate at six cents per $100 assessed value. Five of those six cents are designated for annual payments on the county’s first responder radio system.
Before the August 2020 election, the county had three sales taxes – general fund, half cent; parks and stormwater, half cent; and transportation/roads, three-eights cent. At that election, the parks and recreation and stormwater tax was divided and reduced to a quarter cent. A quarter cent law enforcement sales tax was also established.
The law enforcement tax became effective Jan. 1 of this year with the first collections received in March. With this additional funding, the total law enforcement budget in Platte County has been bolstered by 14 percent from 2020 numbers.
Robinson’s budget included wage adjustments for law enforcement – and all other county employees – of three percent.
According to the budget document, “Lingering uncertainties from the pandemic resulted in the auditor’s recommended budget forecasting a conservative estimation for sales tax in the general fund, holding at the 2021 tax projection for 2022 at $9,550,000, slightly lower than the (sales tax) committee’s recommendation of $10,273,482. Early estimations have collections slightly under the 2021 amended budget of $9,587,562.
Use tax collections include a slightly higher than 2021 estimated budget collections of $4,562,092 at $4,650,000.
Parks tax projected collections are expected to be down, due to the reduction of the sales tax in 2020.
One COVID-19-related federal stimulus fund is considered closed in 2022, but a new fund for ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds has been established.
Robinson noted that there are no new or anticipated bond issuances. Due to the law suit over payments for the Zona Rosa parking garages – which the county did win on appeal – the county’s bond ratings remain down from AA to Ba3 with Moody’s and junk status with Standard and Poor’s.