The Campbell County Fiscal Court presented its proposed $68.7 million 2024-2025 fiscal year budget on May 15, an almost $12 million increase from 2023-2024.
This was the budget’s first reading; therefore, it was not voted on. The budget will be voted on for adoption at a future meeting before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. Campbell County Finance Director Laura Lewis gave the budget presentation.
Most of the increase compared to the fiscal year 2024 budget and the fiscal year 2025 proposed budget is related to the anticipated pass-through grant funding of $10 million from the state.
“The county is required to budget for revenue and expenditures related to grants in order to utilize the funding or we have to do a budget amendment after the award,” Lewis said. “If we know about a potential award during the budget planning process, we include it for efficiency and cost control.”
Other items contributing to the $12 million budget increase:
- $7 million in state grant funds to be disbursed that may pass through the county.
- $3 million in expenditures related to the KPDI grant award of fiscal year 2024, which will be a 50/50 reimbursement grant from the state, as expensed and reported for reimbursement.
- $2 million is related to other expected inflationary or known cost increases.
Here are some of the proposed budget highlights
Fiscal 2024 budget vs fiscal 2024 projection:
- Revenue projection is $825,000 or 2% higher than budgeted.
- Revenue variances in tax collection result because of a conservative estimating process and new growth to the tax base.
- Expenditure is projected to be $8.9 million or 16% less than budgeted.
- Expenditure differences result from several factors including delivery delays that result in carrying over projects to the next budget year.
- Some projects also end up costing less than estimated.
Fiscal 2024 budget vs fiscal 2025 proposed budget:
- Revenue in fiscal year 2025 is projected to grow $16.9 million or 35%, with $10.5 million or 22% related to potential pass-through grants. Pass-through grants are a type of federal funding that is awarded to one organization, which then distributes the funds to another organization.
- Revenue growth without grant revenue included is projected to grow 13% or $5.9 million due to new economic growth.
- Expenditures in the fiscal year 2025 are projected to increase by $11.9 million or 21%, with $7.5 million of grant expenditures included.
- Expenditures related to lowering the budgeted jail vacancy rate, health care insurance increases, and cost of living adjustments with employer-paid benefit costs included are $2.2 million or 3% of the budgeted increase.
“Historically, the budgeted deficit is overcome each year by the collection of additional revenue due to growth and lower-than-anticipated expenditures due to timing delays and contingency estimates,” according to Lewis’ presentation.
Revenue fiscal year 2025
- Real Property Tax and Payroll Tax collections combined are almost 50% of the county’s annual revenue collection. These are two of approximately 90 revenue sources.
- Due to the compensating tax rate calculation and other statutory restrictions, the Fiscal Court has limited control over increasing revenue collection, according to Lewis.
- Revenue generation from property tax is limited to a 4% increase compared to prior year collections; therefore, Lewis said the county is forecasting operating expenditures to increase an average of 5%.
Expenditures fiscal year 2025
Personnel
Employee wages and benefits are the largest expense at 36% of the budget.
- Health insurance expense: increasing 8.5% or $196,000 – shared evenly between the fiscal court and employees.
Pension contributions:
- Non-Hazardous Rate of 19.71% is a decrease of 15.55% from fiscal year 2024.
- Hazardous Rate of 38.61% is a decrease of 11.63% from fiscal year 2024.
- Overall savings in the fiscal year 2025 of $500,000, but this will impact unfunded liability for pensions.
Capital investment
The county capital plan provides departments with the equipment to perform community services safely and efficiently and maintain the county’s infrastructure.
Significant recurring costs/projects each year include:
- Roads and infrastructure.
- Police and other fleet vehicle replacements
- Delivery has been the greatest challenge of the past three years, according to Lewis.
Roads
The county road department is funded by some state funding programs that offset the cost of regular repairs and infrastructure replacements through several programs such as county road aid, municipal road aid and flex funds.
- Capital projects planned for the road fund total $3.6 million and increase of about $295,000 over fiscal year 2024 costs. This includes $2.8 million for infrastructure projects such as bridges, resurfacing, street rebuilds and slip repair.
Detention center
Jail funding has been impacted by the per diem rate for state and federal inmates, staffing levels, and early releases during the pandemic.
- While per diem rates are being paid by the federal government and the state for their inmates held in Campbell County, they are still below the estimated cost per day for fiscal year 2024.
- Most expenditures for the detention center are fixed operations costs and non-personnel expenditures that are required.
Capital purchases/projects carried over to the 2025 Budget:
- Road restructures and equipment purchase: $315,000.
- Jail and commissary projects: $1.1 million.
- Park projects delayed to fiscal year 2025: $305,000.
- County comprehensive plan continuing: $350,000.
- Grant match for equipment/projects – not awarded or carried over to fiscal year 2025 $3.6 million.
“You need to take a bow yourself because you run the show on the budget production and review,” Campbell County Judge/Executive Steve Pendery said. “I will further point out the state of Kentucky’s way of doing things, it’s not what one would describe as simple or sometimes even logical. Year in and year out, very rarely do you have any kind of difficulty understanding where we are and what sort of money we have access to. Let’s just say we are very well served.”
The proposed budget can be viewed on the Campbell County government website, as well as other transparency tools such as OpenGov, which helps the public understand more about the Fiscal Court’s operations and performance.
The budget will be sent to the state for approval and then returned to the fiscal court for adoption at the second reading.
