Residents face smaller county tax levy

Dodge County residents could see a reduction in their cost for running county government.

At their regular meeting Wednesday morning, Dodge County supervisors got their first look at the overall

2008-09 county budget, totaling about $18.4 million in the county’s general fund. That’s up from more than $11.6 million spent for the 2007-08 fiscal year.

But with an overall increase of about five percent in valuations through assessor’s office corrections “the county’s portion of the property tax won’t go up,” said Supervisor Paul Marsh, who chairs the county board’s finance committee. “Some people will even see a reduction in the county’s portion of their property taxes.”

In a report to members of the Dodge County Board of Supervisors, Dodge County Clerk Fred Mytty said the budget calls for nearly a

5 percent decrease in the county’s portion of the property taxes and just more than a 7.5 percent decrease in the county’s levy.

But Marsh said that also allows county officials to do some different things in the budget, echoing Mytty’s report.

“This is one budget which looks ahead for future planning,” Mytty said. “Next year, due to the timeliness of board meetings, we have an added expense of 27 pay periods (rather than 26).”

The increase in the overall county budget is partially

reflected in a couple of areas in the county’s general fund. The budget calls for about $2.4 million in the road capital improvement sinking fund, which Marsh and other members of the finance committee want to change to the capital improvements/economic development fund, keeping roads as the main focus.

By adding economic development to that particular county fund, Marsh said supervisors would have the flexibility to use that fund to boost chances to land a new facility that would add jobs to Dodge County. He said Fremont was among the top contenders for the Yahoo facility that will be in La Vista.

“During discussions for that I made a commitment for $1.5 million for that,” he said. “I would have had to pull some things together to get that. I think we need the flexibility of a pool of money for the next time this comes up.”

In last year’s budget, the road capital improvement sinking fund totaled nearly $226,000.

Also, the county’s interest fund is budgeted for just more than $2.1 million in the new budget, up from just more than $758,000 last year.

The county’s tax levy would be nearly 2 cents lower this year than last year based on the proposed budget, Marsh said.

Supervisor Rob George recommended changing that to be only 1 cent less, using funds generated from the other 1 cent levy for reserve funds.

Marsh said that might sound better than it would be.

“The problem I have is that at the same time we have an economy that’s very fragile,” Marsh said. “I don’t know that I want to get too aggressive with that.”