CANYON CITY — The Grant County Budget Committee approved a balanced preliminary budget totaling just under $100 million for fiscal year 2023-2024 on Tuesday, May 9, after six meetings and three months of deliberation.

The committee’s approved budget will be reviewed at a county court hearing on June 7, in which the public can provide comment, prior to a special meeting on June 28 in which the court is expected to adopt the budget for the next fiscal year.

The Budget Committee consists of the three members of the Grant County Court and three citizen members: Charlene Morris, Kathy Smith and Amy Kreger.

The approved budget includes a $12 million general fund, cash on hand of $5.6 million, an unappropriated ending balance of $4.1 million and an operating contingency fund of $455,644.

The approved total budget of $99.3 million is up about $4.5 million from $94.8 million in the current fiscal year. It projects a workforce of 81.57 full-time-equivalent employees for fiscal year 2023-24, up from 81.53 FTE this fiscal year.

County officials said the general fund will receive $250,000 more than the previous year in federal payments in lieu of taxes for a total of $1 million in PILT funds going into its general fund with the creation of a special road district, approved by the court on May 4. Passage of House Bill 2174 in the Legislature in 2021 allows a separate payment from the U.S. Forest Service under the Secure Rural Schools Act to not count against a county’s PILT funding as the SRS funds are transferred into a road district.

The county has also received one of two $2.2 million payments from the federal Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund and expects to receive the remaining funds sometime prior to the end of June, officials said. The LATCF is a general revenue enhancement program that provides assistance to eligible counties.

A large part of the county’s budget was awarded to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, with a total budget of $2.1 million for the next fiscal year. Sheriff McKinley said much of that total came from non-tax funded grant monies, including about $660,000 for the coming fiscal year from federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Covid-19 relief fund money and a Public Safety Network Grant received last year, with about $206,000 from that budgeted for next fiscal year toward upgrading radio communications for the department.

The department’s budget for 2023-24 includes funding for five patrol officers, three vehicles and $10,000 for a new expense line to track pre-employment costs, which officials described as costs relating to mental health evaluation before hiring. Two of the five patrol positions are still vacant, officials said.

Sheriff Todd McKinley said he was “pleased with what was approved.”

The citizen budget committee members said that in order to fund the sheriff’s office more sustainably into the future, the court should place a tax levy on the November ballot this year. The move would help decision-makers better plan for the 2025 fiscal year as COVID-19 relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act and the LATCF monies run out. The two funding streams included $1.4 million from ARPA and about $4.4 million from LATCF.

“Let’s get it out there in November so when we come back next year, as a budget committee, we know if it’s an option or not,” Kreger said. “If it goes on the ballot in November this year, it wouldn’t be taxed until November of 2024, so it doesn’t happen overnight.”

Smith agreed.

“If you don’t find another funding source for the sheriff’s office, this money will be gone,” she said. “And then what will you do? They don’t have enough revenue to continue paying out expenses in the general fund.”

Budget committee member Charlene Morris said a levy “should be up to the voters at this point.”

“It should have been done last year,” she added.

County Treasurer Julie Ellison had originally proposed an 8% cost of living adjustment for wages, but the committee voted for a 6% COLA instead for the next fiscal year.

“For total dollars it didn’t save a whole lot of money, but we’re thinking that rate of pay was not sustainable into the future with that high of a percent increase across the board,” Smith said.

Kreger agreed.

“The 8% was too high because the majority of the taxpayers in the county are not getting an 8% increase, and 6% was a good meet in the middle,” she said.

At the beginning of the budget deliberation process, Smith and Kreger said they wanted to protect the LATCF money from being placed in the general fund and spent in the next fiscal year because the money was essentially a one-time payment, not a revenue stream that would continue in future years.

During deliberations, budget committee members voted unanimously to move the entire amount of the LATCF money, $4,363,200, into the unappropriated ending balance, a savings fund that cannot be touched until the beginning of the next fiscal year, Smith said.

At the May 9 budget committee meeting, human resources manager Laurie Cates advised the committee that $300,000 from the LATC fund needed to be set aside, per recommendation of Grant County’s legal counsel, for a potential legal settlement. The money was placed into the operating contingency fund, a fund for unexpected expenses.

When asked for details, County Commissioner Jim Hamsher said he could not comment on the settlement because it is a pending legal matter.