Centre County’s $107M budget includes pay raises, but no tax increase for 12th year
Centre County Commissioners have adopted the 2022 proposed county budget, with a total operating budget of $107.7 million dollars. For the 12th straight year, residents will not see a tax increase.
But just because there’s no increase in taxes doesn’t mean the budget isn’t bigger. The 2021 county budget was around $81.6 million dollars. The increase seen this year is mainly due to special revenue funds, Corey Troutman, managing shareholder at Susquehanna Accounting and Consulting Solutions, said. That includes grants and COVID-19 monies.
To cover revenue shortfalls across county departments due to the pandemic, the budget includes $2.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds.
Employees across the board will receive raises, though some will get more than others. The increase for non-union employees who do not work in 911 is the equivalent of $1 per hour, Margaret Gray, county administrator, said. The increase for union telecommunicator employees is a greater dollar-per-hour percentage; the contract calls for a 4% increase and that will be in addition to a revision in their hourly rate, Gray said.
With the salary increases, the shortfall increased by about $1.7 million, but the county will be able to recapture some of that money by billing the state back for certain departments, Commissioner Mark Higgins said last week.
“Due to a lot of hard work, we theoretically could’ve had a balanced budget if revenues were normal and we give no raises,” Commissioner Mark Higgins said during a work session last week.
The total compensation expenditures — salaries, taxes and benefits — totals a 6.4% increase over the 2021 budget, Troutman said. That includes about $8.7 million in funding for health insurance and the county’s Actuarially Determined Contribution to fund the Centre County Employees’ Retirement System, according to the budget summary.
The salary increases will continue to be a cost driver for the county, Commissioner Michael Pipe said.
“That is a big cost driver that’s going to stay with us, not just in 2022 but in future years. But it’s a recognition prior to the finalization of the salary compensation classification study that we do need to increase salaries a little bit across the board,” Pipe said. “We’re especially cognizant that a percentage increase would not have as much of an impact on some of the employees that we have on the frontlines who are making a little bit lower on the salary range. This will help give them a very large percentage increase.”
There could potentially be more wage increases when the salary study is completed, Pipe said.
Of the total budget, the operating budget is $106,329,704 and the capital budget is $1,431,813. The budget does maintain the general fund reserves of about 11.74%.
“I think this is a sound budget, but boy, I’m going to tell you, if I would have ever thought there would have been a day where I would have seen $107 million in county budget, that’s a game changer for us,” Commissioner Steve Dershem said. “How we manage this moving forward is going to be a challenge.”
There are areas that could potentially still be impacted by the pandemic, like real estate taxes, hotel tax revenue, revenues for services and lower interest earnings, Troutman said. The county’s budget reflects approximately $2.5 million of ARP funding to continue to provide county services at its existing level, he said.
“The good news that we have for that is for ARP, the American Rescue Plan, they enable us to continue to ... budget a consistent level of providing government services and really take any of those risks that we normally have in that process and utilize revenue loss funds to cover those costs,” Troutman said.
The general fund expenditure budget increased by about $1.85 million over the 2021 budget, with the majority of that coming from salaries and benefits. Other notable general fund department increases that the county pointed out were the prothonotary (a system upgrade for $252,000), elections (operating increases of $237,000 due to mail-in ballots and advertisement) and the prison ($147,000, with most of that from medical contracted services).
The public can view a summary and a presentation of the budget online at https://www.centrecountypa.gov/877/Budget. There will be a 20-day comment period before the commissioners vote on the final budget adoption on Dec. 28.
This story was originally published December 7, 2021 at 5:13 PM.
