Butler County Commissioners discuss 2025 budget, receive annual veterans update

Butler County Commissioners held a public hearing for the 2025 tax budget for general funds and all funds for the county at a July 8 meeting. The budget displayed a $1 million dollar difference between revenue and expenses.

Revenue for general funds is expected to be at $127.8 million, and expenses are expected to be $126.7 million for the year.

"[The budget] is a projection of how we're going to collect and expand in 2024, and then have an unencumbered carryover into 2025," Boyko said, "which then begins to establish estimated resources ... but more importantly it identifies if there's a deficit in any of [the commissioners'] unvoted millage."

In comparison to 2024's budget, there's an expected 4% increase — about $4.9 million — in general fund expenses, and an expected 4.7% increase in revenue. County Administrator Judy Boyko said 2025 will be the first year county revenue is expected to increase more than expenditures.

The increased expenditures come from salary raises for elected officials and criminal justice employees, a 2% increase for contracted services and supplies, and $900,000 in additional healthcare funding.

In addition to the $16 million budget stabilization policy set in place around 10 years ago, Boyko said she's also requesting they start a nine-month cash reserve in the general fund to cover any one time expenses, adding up to $101.6 million.

She said Finance Director David McCormick reconciled the data from the budget and searched for any discrepancies from previous years and has been instrumental in creating higher level overviews of the budget for future years.

During McCormick's presentation, he said general fund revenues are estimated to end up at $140.6 million as compared to the $122 million that were budgeted for 2024.

"The major differences between the rest of the year and the adopted budget relate to sales tax that the administrator alluded to where we are estimating $58 million of sales tax revenues as compared to the $51 million budget," McCormick said. "The other major variance is [that] we are now estimating $12 million of investment income for 2024 as compared to [the] $6 million we budgeted for the year."

General funds are anticipated to increase by $1 million in 2025, while the non general funds are anticipated to decrease by $61.6 million, for an overall decrease in fund balances of $60.6 million, McCormick said.

The final budget will be adopted in December 2024 after a final hearing and budget development session.

During the presentation section of the meeting, Mike Farmer, executive director for Butler County Veterans Services Commission, presented the 2023 annual veteran report and 2024 outlook.

He said transportation and suicide prevention have become major focuses for the agency considering the veteran population has decreased by 9% due to suicides in the past four years.

Last year the commission raised $286,000 for financial aid to help get people off the streets and into homes long term.

"What we really focus on in our financial assistance program is getting them immediate, temporary financial assistance and figuring out long term solutions to kind of address their issues," Farmer said. The ultimate goal of the commission is to keep veterans from needing their programs, he added.

The Butler County Commissioners' next weekly meeting will be held at 9:30 a.m. July 15 in the Butler County Government Services building, 315 High St.