By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Board of Reno County Commissioners set the ceiling for their 2022 county budget on Tuesday.
"That brings the proposed mill levy to be 39.498," said County Administrator Randy Partington. "The Revenue Neutral Rate has a mill levy of 39.967. This would bring in $25.3 million in taxes, compared to this year of $25.6 million. It's about a 5% reduction in the mill levy. It eats into a little bit of the cash balance but with the numbers, we still would probably have about four months of a cash balance."
This now means that the county, once they have the budget hearing on August 24, cannot spend more than that amount in 2022. They can always spend less.
"We need to be careful about spending too much of that cash," Partington said. "Expenses are always going up. Even if we stay flat with the number of personnel, the cost of products always goes up. The cost of us doing business goes up. You know, just because we're a government doesn't mean we don't have to pay the increase in commodity costs or personnel cost taxes. We have our own overhead that goes up, so it's hard to stay flat for very long."
Some taxpayers with additional assessments for rural fire districts, for example, may still see their taxes increase, as most of those are above revenue neutral this year. That is a separate budget with a separate hearing from the overall county budget.