BOCC: A Small Property Tax Mill Levy
Reduction, Bank Shuts Down the County’s Credit Cards, Day Continues as Chair
by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The January 10, 2024 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting started at 9 a.m. in the Commissioners’ Office. All three Commissioners were present: Chair Kevin Day and members Bill Canda and Lucas Epp.
In Unfinished Business, Epp gave the status on hiring a consultant to help with the 2022 audit issues and keep the Finance Department running until the BOCC hires a new Finance Director. Epp said the consultants he contacted were in the $200k range (yearly salary) and that was too much. He is continuing to look. Canda mentioned that local, Len Arrigo, a CPA was available.
In a disturbing development, Epp said that Kirkpatrick Bank “has shut down” the county’s credit cards due to late payments. Epp said that the county has been paying late payment and interest fees every month for 2023. (Later on, Epp mentioned that those penalties cost the county around $6,000 last year!) Epp said,
“It was our fault” as the county was not paying the bill on time as the county’s departments were not paying their portion of the bill or paying it late. Plus, the Accounts Payable cycle happens at the end of the month and that was causing delays. (It looks like the Finance Department, under ex Finance Director Braden Wilson,
completely dropped the ball on this. Your local bank freezing the county’s credit cards is like, really bad. Total Clown Show.) Epp said he is going to fix this.
First item in New Business was Adopting the 2024 County Budget. Vernon Roth, the county’s IT Director, had taken over the task of assembling the budget since we have no Finance Director. (Vernon has done an outstanding job on this. He has worked day and night, six or seven days a week to get this done. And it ain’t his job. Thanks, Vernon.)
The big gorilla in the room was what are the Commissioners going to do to the General Fund mill levy rate to reduce the big property tax increases. With the huge 2023 statewide property evaluations sky high, land owners are facing huge property tax increases across the state. The two biggest taxing districts in the county are the school and the county. (The school had already lowered their mill rate to save us money.) The big question is will the BOCC lower the General Fund mill levy?
It appears that during the recent BOCC Budget Workshops, the Commissioners had proposed lowering the rate from 10.425 mills to 9.75 mills. Vernon stated that this caused a bit of discussion from the Commissioners because it seemed to not be a lot. Canda stated that there were various county departments that could not be touched (like Road & Bridge and Human Resources) so the only arena where the Commissioners could really reduce anything was the General Fund. Canda said the mill reduction would only reduce the tax for each parcel in the county by $8 (Eight Dollars). He said there are about 9,000 parcels in the county and most of them were taxable. The discussion went on for a while with Day stating that he wasn’t sure this small reduction was worth the hassle, but he was not opposed to it. (the reduction is temporary, for one year.) All three Commissioners voted to approve the budget.
There was an issue with the timing of deciding the county’s budget before the BOCC actually voted on the Resolution for Setting the County Mill Levies as that Agenda Item was AFTER the Budget Agenda Item. Somehow, the Board thought that doing mill levy change after the Budget was okay.
Finally the Resolution to Set the County Mill Levies came up. The Commissioners basically repeated a lot of what they had previously said during the Budget discussion. The General Fund one-year General Fund rate reduction to 9.75 mills (from 10.425) was approved unanimously.
Later, the County Government Appointments Item came up. The only item of interest was who was going to be the BOCC Chair for 2024. Newcomer Epp made a surprise move saying to Day that if Day didn’t want to do it, he would like to be Chair. This got Day dancing around with Epp with Day stating he would like to continue as Chair but if Epp really wanted it, Day would step aside. Then Epp said if Day really wanted it, he would back off. Day then noted that Epp was real busy with the Finance Department meltdown and being Chair is a fair amount of work.
Canda finally said he was fine with Day continuing as Chair. All three finally voted for Day to continue as Chair.