Commissioners start work on budget
MINERAL COUNTY - The arduous task of deciding how much money Mineral County will have in the next fiscal year and how the money will be spent began last Friday during the county commissioner’s meeting in Superior.
The process, which will take several more weeks to complete, began with commissioners examining last year’s budget and making adjustments to paperwork regarding how much money was actually spent in each category.
While county department’s requested budgets have been received, Commissioner Roman Zylawy said the process will take time. Zylawy said the delay in working on the county budget was due to the wait from the state as to how much Mineral County is actually worth.
“The fiscal year starts in July but we were waiting for the state,” Zylawy said. “The state assesses the value of the county every six years and that was this year. So we weren’t sure what our revenue would be from the state.”
Zylawy said the revenue the county will have is based on property taxes. He said how much the county will have to spend is based on a number of factors including the value of “mills,” payment in lieu of taxes (PILT) and the Secure Rural Schools money.
“Those are our main revenue streams,” Zylawy said. “When we know what those amounts will be, we can finalize the budget.”
According to the financial website Investopedia the taxing entity, in this case the state of Montana, determines mill rates. The website goes on to explain, “for a given jurisdiction, mill rates may depend on the classification of property, whether it is residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and so on.”
The explanation on Investopedia says the mill rate is “the amount of tax payable per dollar of the assessed value of a property. Property tax in dollar terms is calculated by multiplying the assessed property value and the mill rate and dividing by one thousand.”
In other words, the higher the value of a property, the higher the mill rate and the more revenue the county generates from the property taxes.
PILT money from the federal government comes to Mineral County because of the small amount of private land in the state. Payment in lieu of taxes money is received because of the lack of tax base in an area with so much land owned by the federal government which does not generate tax revenue on its own.
Secure Rural Schools (SRS) money comes from the federal government as part of a program created in 2000 to reimburse counties for money they aren’t making through natural resource management.
The Secure Rural Schools Act of 2000 allows counties with a national forest to take advantage of federal money in a program that has been renewed by the federal government most recently in 2013 albeit at reduced funding levels.
Zylawy said the combination of the SRS, PILT and the calculated mill rate will determine how much Mineral County has to spend on everything from patrol cars to snow removal. He said commissioners have received all the various county department’s “wish lists” and would, in the coming weeks, determine how to allocate the money.
“All the departments have given us their budgets,” Zylawy said. “We have to take into account insurance costs. Some of the departments need new equipment or supplies. We have to look at what money we have and potentially adjust it down or leave it the same.”
Zylawy said budget work would likely be on the next few commissioner meeting’s agendas.