Reno County Administrator Randy Partington knows that COVID-19 has changed the budget process for 2021 from what normally happens.
"The budget has to be adopted and sent to the county clerk by August 25," Partington said Monday. "To do that, you have to obviously have all departments come in with all their requests, their thoughts, what they see for the next year. They start that process around February."
With the pandemic, department heads quickly understood that changes needed to be made.
"All the directors did a great job at keeping their budgets as flat as possible," Partington said. "Some of the increases may be capital. We made cuts across the board. We tried to be as efficient as possible with every expenditure. On the revenue side, for the expectations for 2021, we made the assumption after talking with other city and county managers across the state for about a 20% reduction in the sales tax expectations, which is about $800,000 for Reno County."
Property taxes are the backbone of the county's budget.
"The majority is property tax," Partington said. "Probably 70 to 75%. The others is user fees and sales tax is probably about 20%."
The county commission will get its look at the budget on Tuesday.