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BELLEFONTE -- In the Nov. 14 meeting, the Centre County Commissioners were presented with the tentative 2024 county budget indicating no increase in county real estate taxes for the 14th consecutive year.
During this week's meeting, the commissioners have approved the final budget; the total millage of 7.84 mills -- 6.65 mills for the county's General Millage and 1.19 mills for the Debt Millage -- remains unchanged.
Richard Killian, Budget and Finance Director for Centre County, presented the budget again to the commissioners and noted they were not aware of any questions or comments from the public about the budget.
The budget was made available to the public for a 20-day comment period before the commissioners could officially adopt it.
"This was truly a team effort," said Killian, who thanked the many people involved in the budget process that helped.
Commissioner Steven Dershem has been on the board for all 14 previous budget adoptions where there was no increase in taxes. He thanked Killian for all his hard work throughout the process.
"I know this isn't done in just a short period of time, it's something you work on throughout the entire year. When we look at these budgets it's always a challenge to figure out your revenues, expenses and try to get them to match. As we approach the next couple of years there's going to be even bigger challenges. This is a pretty strong budget and I think it puts us in a good position for 2024 and '25. This is not done in a vacuum. It's tough to make those decisions...I think this year we've been very fair and I think we continue to represent not only the county but our employees and the aims of this board," said Dershem.
The 14-page document made available to the public included "Budget Highlights" that break down the details of the budget in easy-to-read terms.
This page indicated the main factors that impact expenditures, which included increases in employee insurance coverage, increases in liability insurance and capital expenditures that include unexpected repairs and the implementation of the Capital Improvement Plan.
The budget also included a side by side comparison of major expenditures budgeted in 2023 versus what is budgeted in 2024.
"Growth in assessed values compared to the same period last year (is) 1.66 percent, a little bit higher than we've seen recently -- is welcomed news. A 10-year average value has been about 1.28 percent and it's been hovering between that and 1.4 percent for quite some time," said Killian in a previous meeting.
The presentation included a chart of the revenues, splitting it up by showing how much of that total came from grants and payments in lieu of taxes, real estate taxes (general), departmental earnings, real estate taxes (debt) and internal charges and services.
The total budget in the amount of $141,727,824 includes the operating budget, $113,137,810 -- an increase of 6 percent from the 2023 budget -- and $28,590,014 for capital reserve.
"I want to mention for the folks at home that the majority of that 28.6 million (capital reserve) is the Centre Crest Remodeling project... But I'm sure there's some money in there for the Courthouse, for the Willowbank Building,..." said Commissioner Mark Higgins.
The budget includes revenues at a total of $112,198,712 -- a 5.1 percent increase over the 2023 budget.
The budget maintains general fund reserves of approximately 11.1 percent which is within the range recommended by the Government Finance Officers' Association (GFOA).
"This proposed budget combines the use of General Fund reserves and American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to maintain current funding levels for the provision of county services. This still allows us to maintain 11 percent. Eleven percent of our expenditures are in reserve and that's within best practices," said Killian in a previous meeting.
"A big thanks to everyone in the administration, to Jason Moser in our Controller's Office, all of the work that has been done with our finance team -- this has been a really transparent process where we've been able to work through department by department to see what were the pressures in terms of financial pressure that were on each department, where there were opportunities for some savings. I think we can see the end result here is a budget that is focussed on meeting the needs of people in Centre County without a property tax increase at this time, which is pretty remarkable considering the amount of capital investment that we do need to do and are pursuing," said Commissioner Amber Concepcion.
In other news:
-- The commissioners have adopted resolution 27 of 2023 enacting a tax levy and rate as follows: total millage 7.84 of mills on real estate assessed valuation at the rate of taxation of $.78 on each $100 of assessed valuation of taxable property.
-- The commissioners have approved advertising for invitations for bids for the Centre Crest Building Renovation.