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BELLEFONTE -- The Centre County Board of Commissioners has approved its 2023 $106 million budget -- with no tax increase for a thirteenth year.
The budget, presented on Dec. 6, was made available to the public and entered a 20-day review. The commissioners received no questions or comments regarding the budget, allowing them to adopt it during this week's meeting.
Corey Troutman, of Susquehanna Accounting & Consulting Solutions, Inc., joined the commissioners via Zoom to briefly discuss some of the highlights of the budget for the commissioners' consideration.
Troutman highlighted a few key points of the county budget that he found particularly important, such as:
-- There will be no increase in real estate taxes for the thirteenth consecutive year with the county's General Millage (6.65 mills) and Debt Millage (1.19 mills) remaining unchanged.
-- The total 2023 budget is $106,869,156 with an operating budget of $106,726,725 and a capital budget of $142,431.
-- There was a slight revenue increase throughout the general, special revenue and other funds categories over the 2022 budget at 0.3 percent. This includes expenditures totaling $106,726,725, a 0.4 percent increase over the 2022 budget.
The budget, posted to centrecountypa.gov, highlights a few other items. It reads:
-- Revenue areas impacted by the pandemic have the potential to include Real Estate Taxes, Hotel Tax Revenue, Fee for Services Revenue, Grant Revenue and Interest Rate Earnings. This proposal includes the use of American Rescue Plan Act Funding to maintain current funding levels for the provision of County services.
-- Increases salary levels of employees. Covers total compensation expenditures (salary, taxes, benefits) totally an 8.7% increase over the 2022 budget. The salary increases are a result of the completed salary and compensation study in 2022 and anticipated 2021 step and scale adjustments. This includes funding of $9,366,000 for health insurance and the County's ADC (Actuarially Determined Contribution) to fund the Centre County Employees' Retirement System.
-- Maintains general fund reserves of approximately 12.06%. This percentage falls within the range recommended by the Government Finance Officers' Association (GFOA).
The document also lays out the revenues and expenditures in greater detail. It is broken down by departments and compared to the 2022 budget to show the change in funding.
Towards the end of the 17-page document, the budget is broken down visually for the public's consideration. It features a bar graph to show growth in assessed value, ranging from 2014 to 2023. The revenue and expenditures were further expressed in pie charts.
The public may look over these documents at any time.
"We'd only increased our expenses by four-tenths of a percentage point. Congratulations to everyone for the hard work, for the discipline. I know for a lot of our non-profit partners, we appreciate everything they've been doing, too," said Commissioner Mark Higgins.
Commissioner Steven Dershem echoed Higgins' sentiments, adding, "most importantly, we've had some personnel restrictions on this. We lost our finance director in the middle of this process. Corey, John, Natalie -- everyone in this room -- we have a lot to be proud of that we got this done. As Mark indicated, it was a pretty conservative budget. Hopefully we make it to 14 years without a tax increase."
"We know we weren't able to say yes to everything. There were many times that we had to make decisions on requests that came in from department heads or elected officials -- even in our own office -- we had to restrain. Throughout the year we're committed to reexamine them, looking at those again if there's opportunities to revisit. We needed to be very mindful about the position we were in. We're in a good place," said Chairman Michael Pipe.