County Fiscal Year-2022 Budget will not require any tax increases

Following a four-hour, open budget work session on Tuesday, March 30, the Warren County Board of Supervisors is headed toward a late April public hearing on its proposed Fiscal Year-2022 budget. The good news is varying factors, including some increased revenues at the State level and a reduction in health insurance coverage costs, as well as cuts to some originally submitted departmental budgets, have allowed the $126,592,012 budget proposal to be achieved without any tax increases.

Those State revenue increases included a 5% hike to Social Services Department funding and plus 2% to Constitutional Officer’s departments. There was also a 9% reduction in health care coverage costs.

At the 4 p.m. start of the work session, the County Supervisors prepare to adjourn to a closed session to discuss cybersecurity in the wake of the recently discovered ‘intrusion’ of County software. While work continues to assure the intruder is blocked from further access, thus far no impacts on county information or systems has been discovered. Royal Examiner Photo by Roger Bianchini

Of the $126.59-million total, $62.64 million is non-schools related, with $63.94 million covering the nine-school, multiple-auxiliary programs public school system. That compares to the current FY-21 budget total of $118.61 million, $56.36 million non-schools budget, and a $62.24 million public school budget. The local appropriation portion of the public school budget is $27.72 million, with the balance covered by state, federal, or self-generated revenues.

County Administration and Departments

The $6.28 million increase in the county’s non-school budget includes three new positions, a grant coordinator and two I.T. specialists.

Administrator’s departmental budgets to be forwarded for approval included:

County Administration at $521,686, a $120,635 decrease from the FY-21 appropriation;

The WC Sheriff’s Office at $4,997,524, a $584,153 increase over the FY-21 appropriation;

The School Resource Officers at $766,865, a $62,945 increase over the FY-21 appropriation;

Volunteer Fire & Rescue system at $939,994, a $36,783 decrease from the FY-21 appropriation;

The Fire & Rescue Department at $4,376,005, a 536,314 increase over the FY-21 appropriation, with both fiscal years seeing offsetting revenue streams of $303,663;

Treasurer’s Office at $543,648, an $11,632 increase over the FY-21 appropriation;

Elections/Registrar’s Office at $423,709, a $55,622 increase over the FY-21 appropriation;

And Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office at $1,059,325, a $2,522 decrease from the FY-21 appropriation;

Among many others.

The “Board of Supervisors” budget line saw a significant decrease from the current budget, as over $1.66 million in FY-21 legal expenses for EDA civil litigation was moved into the EDA budget, which the County is covering as necessary. The administrator’s EDA budget forwarded is $3,000,000 compared to the FY-21 appropriation of $1,972,669, though as noted those numbers reflect the movement of EDA legal expenses projected at $1,800,000 into the EDA budget from the BOS budget in FY-21.

And that’s enough numbers for one budget article.

With the entire budget to be reviewed and a closed session to discuss upgrades to the County’s cybersecurity infrastructure and protocols slated to begin the work session, it was convened at 4 p.m. and wound up slightly after 9 p.m.

The closed session to discuss cybersecurity opening the work session lasted about one hour. The County is still working to secure its system after the early March discovery of an intrusion of the County’s software that appears to be part of a larger, nationwide intrusion. County officials have not called the unauthorized access a “hack” because thus far no consequences, as in manipulated or stolen files or information has been discovered.

Authorization to advertise the public hearing on the FY-22 Budget proposal is on Tuesday morning, April 6, board meeting agenda. Also, on that agenda is a Public Schools request that an additional appropriation of $2,380,365 is added to its budget. The funding would be covered by a surplus carried over from the school system’s FY-20 budget cycle. Of that additional surplus revenue, $1 million would go to the School Capital Improvement Fund; $1 million to establish a School Transportation Fund; and $380,365 to the School Textbook Fund. The use of the surplus funds was a topic of a joint supervisors-school board budget work session on March 23.