The Jones County Supervisors brought all Jones County department heads together for a serious discussion on the pending FY 2025 county budget.
The board room was full on Feb. 20 of elected officials and department heads. The board wanted to send a unified message that cuts will have to be made to the budget, and that these measures are being made as a result of HF 718.
“The goal of the department head meeting today is to bring everyone up to speed on where the board is at with the budget and what the reality is and knowing that we have to make further cuts based on what has been proposed in the budget,” explained County Auditor Whitney Hein. “Potentially brainstorming ideas of places where we can cut or try to save, implement efficiencies. Everybody is going to have to be a team player on this.”
Hein laid out several scenarios on where levy rates need to fall in order to meet the requirements of the law for FY25, and how much the board would further need to cut the county budget.
Option B results in $418,782 in new property tax dollars over FY24, but an additional $663,000 of expenditures would need to be cut. Option C results in $604,600 in new property tax dollars over FY24, but an additional $477,598 of expenditures would need to be cut. Option D results in $734,479 in new property tax dollars over FY24, but an additional $347,719 of expenditures would need to be cut. Option E results in $864,358 in new property tax dollars over FY24, but an additional $217,840 of expenditures would need to be cut.
“Option F (which produces $1,126,623 in property taxes) would be to just increase the levy rate to make up for what we need,” said Hein. “Realistically, I just don’t think that’s an option at this point. That’s a pretty steep increase. In my opinion, I think we’ll need to land some place between C and D.”
Hein told everyone that cuts need to come from the General Basic (GB) and/or General Supplemental (GS) funds.
“Anything we’re paying out of GS is an acceptable use in GB. However, not all GB uses are acceptable in GS,” she added.
Mike Galloway, the county’s HR director, met with the board and department heads via Zoom to offer some guidance as the county continues to work through the budget.
“This is a whole different world that we’re living in. Everybody is going to have to start thinking of things a little differently,” he warned.
Not all is 100 doom and gloom. Galloway said cities, more so than counties, are feeling the pinch this budget season.
“This biggest issue here is (versus past years), historically, boards/counties were not wanting to raise their levies,” Galloway said. “Whereas this case, you’ve had that tool taken out of the toolbox by the legislature. It’s a different game. Everybody is looking at how they are going to do business differently.”
For a government entity, many of the services they offer are “people services.”
Galloway recommended the county develop a five-year plan for how it foresees maintaining its levy rates per the new law. (HF 718, at this point, runs until FY29.) He advised against furloughs (cutting hours), but advised staying competitive with wages.
“When you start doing that (furloughs), you’re impacting your whole workforce,” he said. “A temporary furlough is also a temporary layoff. What I’ve witnessed is it causes real morale issues. When you do something like that, you’re kicking the can down the road. That problem is going to be there next year. Unfortunately, at some point, you do have to reduce staff.
“A lot of my boards right now are doing an analysis of what things do we have to provide and what things do we not have to provide and looking at those being reduced early on,” he suggested.
Galloway used Iowa Code 331 as a starting point, but said the language within the code “is pretty vague” and “varies by county.”
Sheriff Greg Graver urged the board to look at the outside agencies it funds year after and year, and whether those can be reduced or cut.
“This has been forced upon us by the legislators. This is not our decision to cut this money,” he prefaced. “We don’t have the money to fund a lot of that stuff.”
Supervisor Joe Oswald said some of the outside services the county funds help the county to grow and prosper.
“I completely agree, but we have been put in a position that doesn’t matter,” Graver said. “The legislators told us that doesn’t matter. I know that they (non-profits) depend on local governments. But local governments don’t have the money to provide that anymore.”
County Treasurer Amy Picray said departments have been warned to make cuts to their budgets, the same should apply to outside agencies.
“Do they maybe need to work harder to fundraise and find other sources to be sustainable?” she suggested.
“I’m not in favor of just going down this list and totally slashing them. I think we need to be selective,” Schlarmann said of which agencies get cut or not.
Graver took a stance against the county just cutting budgets across the board.
“That is not a fiscally responsible thing to do,” he said. “We need to look at the stuff that we are providing and do not need to provide. Each department has to look within their own budgets and essentially be prepared for everyone to cut.”
Graver and Galloway said it’s important for the board to know what dollar figure they want to hit before making cuts.
Supervisor John Schlarmann said the county could always see which employees would be willing to voluntarily cut their hours. As long as they work 30 hours, they would still have full-time county benefits.
“Obviously you’d cut their wages, but let’s be honest, a lot of people have a job here because of the benefits,” he said. “If you work four days a week, you have Fridays off and you still have full-time benefits, to me, that’s not horrible.”
Schlarmann said he is not in favor of across-the-board cuts.
“If everyone volunteered to do this, we’d be short-staffed,” commented Oswald.
“I don’t see people volunteering to take less money. Not in my field, I don’t,” Graver shared.
There was also talk of wage increases.
Board of Health Administrator Paula Hart said there have been some years where the board only gave 2 or 3 percent wage increases.
“If this going to start being a hardship for all of the budgets, do you unfortunately make the increase a little lower for everybody this year?” she asked.
The Compensation Board recommended 7 percent for elected officials. The board asked to see comparisons for 5 and 3.5 percent. The union wage increases range from 4.5 to 5.75 percent.
County Attorney Kristofer Lyons shared that there is pending legislation that “would limit elected officials to only ever getting a cost of living increase each year.
“Given what the legislature has been up to lately, I absolutely believe they’re going to pass that,” he continued. “In which case, the elected officials will always be knee-capped.”
Taking Galloway’s suggestion Hein felt each department could take the time between the Feb. 20 and 27 board meetings to come up with a list of code-required services and those not required coming from their offices.
“Indicate in the code whether they’re required or not. It doesn’t have to be elaborate,” she offered.
For instance, in the Auditor’s Office, holding elections is required by code. Offering passport services is not.
“Every department has unique circumstances,” Hein noted.