New budget: No tax hike

COEUR d'ALENE - Kootenai County residents aren't going to see a tax hike next fiscal year.

After revising the proposed budget for fiscal year 2010-11, the county commissioners have published a new budget that no longer calls for a 1 percent tax hike.

"It feels good. That's what we were shooting for the whole time, to not have the tax increase," said Commissioner Todd Tondee.

The change was mostly due to addressing some miscalculations, the commissioner said.

"There were some corrections that helped us a lot, but we also looked at our fund balances and we were able to do it," Tondee said.

A few items were also added to the budget, which raises the grand total to $72,151,802, just above the originally proposed $71,872,236.

That's still $1.5 million less than the current fiscal year's budget, Tondee said.

It was primarily tax information that needed to be corrected, said county Finance Director David McDowell. Some reserve numbers were also adjusted.

He was a little surprised that mistakes had been made, he said, but attributed them to human error.

Commissioner Rick Currie said the commissioners also made small changes to the budget to ax the tax increase.

"There are some things we did with medical," Currie said, referring to medical services at the jail. "I'm just glad we were able to not have to take any of the 3 percent (taxing) authority."

The new budget includes a $200,000 increase for the sheriff's department, bringing its proposed budget to $19,601,729.

The extra revenue is to buy new patrol vehicles and a prisoner transport vehicle, McDowell said.

The increase is possible because of new growth dollars, Tondee said.

"We are using some of our fund balances to do some of these things for one-time expenses," he said.

The new budget also includes a $5,834 increase for the airport budget, which is now proposed at $751,494. The county's general government services also increased $53,252 to $9,176,844.

Other numbers remained the same in the budget.

The revised budget is available on the Kootenai County website, http://www.co.kootenai.id.us/ under the financial reports link.

The commissioners will hold a public hearing on the proposed budget at 6 p.m. on Sept. 1 in room 1 of the Kootenai County Administration Building.