County passes 6 percent tax hike

August 14, 2012, 9:00 pm by James

County Judge Donna Klaeger.

The six percent increase means that taxes would increase from 36.92 cents to 39.34 cents per $100 valuation.

The effect would be an increase of $20.40 on a $100,000 home.

The county’s effective tax rate, the rate needed to generate the same amount of tax revenue as in FY 2012, is 37.30 cents per $100 dollar evaluation, but increases in the county payroll, fuel, maintenance and employee insurance drove expenses higher, resulting in the need to go higher with the tax rate, County Judge Donna Klaeger said.

"We did everything we could do to cut expenses,” Klaeger said. "We asked most of our department heads to cut their budgets 10 percent and they did. We combined jobs and we found more efficient ways to continue to deliver quality services to our citizens.

"At some point you come to the bottom of the well.”

For the rest of the story, see Wednesday’s Bulletin.