The Sweetwater County Board of County Commissioners recently approved the final fiscal year 2023-2024 budget for the county after grappling with decisions about reserve funds, the impacts of Senate File 60, and Cost of Living Adjustment increases.
Increased revenues and cash carryover
During the June 20 Budget Workshop, the last workshop before the final budget was approved, Sweetwater County Accounting Manager Bonnie Berry told the commissioners the budget was currently at a shortfall of $15,335,984, but that did not include the county's cash carryover of roughly $26 million.
Cash carryover for the year comes from both increased revenues during the year and decreased expenditures, Berry explained during the May 16 budget workshop.
Berry predicted having a "significant cash carryover" during the first budget workshop meeting May 6. At that meeting she also told the commissioners the projected revenues for the year to be distributed between general funds, component units, and outside agencies were about $57 million, not including grant revenue. Berry pointed out this year's projected revenues are up significantly. The projected revenues for this year compared to projected revenues at the start of the 2022-2023 fiscal year have gone up approximately $10 million.
Project funds in county reserves
One of the decisions the commissioners made for this year's budget was to set aside money in the county's reserve funds for specific uses.
First the commissioners set up a Capital Reserve Fund with $2 million for capital projects. Then Commissioner Island Richards recommended setting up an additional Strategic Development Reserve Fund with $5 million. He specified that this money would be set aside for projects outside of regular capital expenses, like pursuing a shooting sports complex and indoor arena in the county.
"I don't want to create a bunch of different reserve accounts, but I do think that it's more transparent to show that there's a use for it," Chairman Keaton West said of the money in the funds.
With the $7 million set aside in these two funds added to the general reserve funds, the total for the county reserves is $40,209,874.
Struggling with SF60
One of the biggest struggles the commissioners faced in determining this year's budget was taking Senate File 60 into consideration. SF60, a bill which was passed two years ago, changes the way mineral values in the state are assessed and taxed.
"The overall intent was to move our mineral producers reporting to a monthly production rather than doing it on an annual basis," Commissioner and Former Treasurer Robb Slaughter explained.
Previously, there was an 18-month lag between when minerals were assessed and when they were taxed, which led some counties to see bankruptcies affecting their tax rolls because they couldn't collect taxes from current years. With the changes from SF60, mineral tax producers are now reporting to the Department of Revenue every month, allowing the Department of Revenue to forward the money to the counties monthly.
The provisions of this new system have caused some problems in adjusting and created difficulties in determining the budget, according to Slaughter.
In the past, the county could use a definite number for the county's assessed valuation for budgeting purposes. Now, there is no definite number.
"What Senate File 60 did is now we are actually projecting what the mineral value is going to be in the year that we're actually setting the value," Slaughter explained. "So for this year our county commission was trying to guess as to what our valuation is going to be certified at next year on the mineral values that are being produced. So it's very, very difficult, because no one has a crystal ball."
Slaughter noted that mineral values went up dramatically after the budget was set last year, leading to the increased revenue and cash carryover. With the 12 mill levy, the county took in about $6 million more than what was anticipated in last year's budget. However, value increases are never guaranteed.
"Our concern with Senate File 60 is we have to be very conservative with these budget numbers because we could see exactly the opposite happen," Slaughter said.
If mineral valuations were to go down the county could see a decrease in revenue over the year and have trouble covering the already-approved budget expenses.
"Because of that it was incumbent, we felt, to put more money into reserves to cover that in case something like that were to happen," Slaughter explained.
Another issue coming from SF60 the commissioners faced was the process of catching up from taxes in the past two years and deciding how to handle distributions from the 12 mill levy to the county's component units in the future.
"With this being the first year that this has been implemented, we felt like we had to make some changes," Slaughter said.
In the past, the county's component units were each allocated a certain percentage of the county's 12 mill levy. The component units include the Sweetwater Events Complex, Sweetwater County Historical Museum, Sweetwater County Library System, Southwest Counseling Service, Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County and the Sweetwater County District Board of Health.
"To make things simpler, and to do it more in accordance with what some of the other counties are doing, we decided that we would take the full amount of the 12 mill which is being collected and then through an interagency transfer from our general fund, fund the agencies at what their budget requests were that were approved by the county in the budget," Slaughter explained.
This process will ensure that each component unit receives the exact amount they requested, according to Slaughter. He added that the potential downfall is that if revenues are less than expected, the county would still have to fund the component units the full amount and would have to make up any loss from the county reserves.
Working through the provisions of SF60 is "something that's taken the entire state of Wyoming about a year and a half to figure out," Slaughter said, as well as something that "created a lot of indecision" for the commissioners.
The amount budgeted for all the component units comes to $15,576,461.
In the meeting to approve the budget, Commissioner Island Richards noted that making adjustments for SF60 affected the way the budget numbers may be perceived.
"I know this budget looks like we're spending a lot more money than we are," Richards said.
He explained that making adjustments for the component agencies makes the budget look big but doesn't reflect the ways some expenditures will be recaptured or the adjustments made to have more money in reserves to take on the possibility of absorbing shortfalls.
COLA adjustments
The commissioners also approved a 3% Cost of Living Adjustment for Sweetwater County employees within the budget.
The discussion started with the idea of a 4% COLA, but changes were made out of the desire to be able to keep giving COLAs in upcoming years.
"I believe that our COLA is appropriate," Richards said. "Looking at 25 years of COLA history, anytime this board has granted large COLA increases it's been quickly followed by years of zero increases, and I would like to be able to continue to give increases every year. I know there will be years that that might not be possible, but if we spend too much money at once we may have to claw that back through staff reductions and I don't want to see Sweetwater County do that again. I would like to have us provide controlled growth in Sweetwater County."
The commissioners voted 4-1 to approve the final county budget in a special meeting last Thursday, with Commissioner Lauren Schoenfeld being the sole "no" vote after expressing her disagreement with the COLA for county employees.
"I personally feel like we worked through it pretty well while trying to take care of multiple needs," Chairman West said of the budget.
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