The Montague County Commissioner’s Court has called two meetings for July 6.
The first one at 9 a.m. is a public hearing on the 2021-2022 proposed budget, which was filed on June 14 and placed on the county’s website for review. The second agenda item is to consider adopting the budget proposal.
That budget proposal does not include the $50,000 placed in contingency this past Monday for next year’s budget for additional repairs on sliding doors at the county jail. A request to spend $43,416 to repair five of the doors this year was approved Monday.
The original budget proposal showed a little more than $9.8 million general fund expenses, $486,984 for indigent health care, $1.1 million in precinct one, $985,785 in precinct two, $931,790 in precinct three and $1,006,384 in precinct four.
There also are numerous restricted funds within the budget, but these are the primary ones for county operations.
This budget also does not have a tax rate set. That figure will not be calculated until the certified property values arrive in late July; afterwhich, the court will take another look at the budget to consider a tax rate.
Depending on the projected tax revenue the budget may stay as proposed or face cuts to meet the tax rate the court desires.
In April the preliminary property values for the county came in at $2,025,557,101, which was up $74,306,876 above the 2020 certified values. Using the 2020 tax rate of .5641 cents per $100 in value those values could generate an additional $419,165.09 in revenue.
Certified values tend to stay in the vicinity of the preliminaries, but it is never a sure thing due to protests, property sales, mineral values and other factors. The county’s new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
The second called meeting is to consider confirming the location of an existing county road Frontier Drive and accept a new survey for the property. That meeting is set for 9:15 a.m.