County budget public hearing set for March 17

GREENFIELD — The Adair County Board of Supervisors set a public hearing for March 17 to adopt the county’s fiscal year 2022 budget during their meeting Wednesday.

Adair County Auditor Mandy Berg explained the process began in December with the valuation process and progressed from there. The deadline to have the budget certified is March 31.

“[The budget] has kind of filled the last couple of months,” Berg said. “Most departments came in at about the same asking level as they did last year. There haven’t been huge increases to where we’ve had to move things around.”

Berg said that the most significant costs for the county remain insurance. In terms of county departments, the proposed budget sees the most money going to Secondary Roads.

“It was a strange year because with that increase in property tax dollars we had a little room to work with without raising our levies or anything like that,” Berg said.

The official publication outlining the budget proposed will be in a future Adair County Free Press or Fontanelle Observer.

Maximum Property Tax Dollars

A resolution approving maximum property tax dollars was passed by the supervisors following a public hearing.

According to Berg, the only comment came from a caller who asked if the proposed rate meant his taxes would be raised.

“We explained to him that this shows that we have a 3.84% increase for property tax dollars, which we will be receiving out of the general services fund, and a 4.24% from last year’s on the rural fund,” Berg said. “We explained to him that we did not raise those levies, the only reason those percentages have gone up is our values have gone up. We wanted him to know it would depend on his values and what other entities are doing with their levies whether or not his taxes will increase or not.”

In other county business, the supervisors:

• Made an amendment to the FY21 budget due to funds coming in that will be pushed back to other entities, like the Adair County Historical Society, Adair County Public Health, and the local libraries.

• Heard a report from Engineer Nick Kauffman on the latest activities by Secondary Roads and awarded a contract for farm-to-market granular surfacing.

• Heard from Eddie Bajric of Access Systems about a possible new phone system. While the board isn’t necessarily interested at this time, they may research other systems to compare prices and look into it in the future as the current system is functioning well but is aging.