Cerro Gordo supervisors adopt FY 2024 budget

MASON CITY — The Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors today approved the Fiscal Year 2024 budget that starts on July 1st.

County budget director Heather Mathre says the countywide property tax levy which all taxpayers will pay will be at $5.46 per $1000 valuation, while the rural levy will be at $3.398 per $1000.  She says,  “The countywide levy rate will drop roughly a penny and the rural levy will stay the same.”

Mathre says among the new funds coming into the county will be $120,000 in opioid settlement funds.  She says local governments are receiving a substantial amount of opioid settlement funds from manufacturers and distributors who have settled lawsuits. These funds will be coming in over the next 18 years and be earmarked toward programs to help those who have battled opioid addiction.”

Mathre says spending on special projects for the county will go up from $2.8 million this fiscal year to $5.5 million in the next budget year due to funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.  She says, “We’ve been spending quite a bit, and this next year proposed to go up. A majority of that money is our American Rescue Plan money that we need to have obligated by Fiscal Year 2024 and spend by 2026.”

The supervisors typically have to have the budget certified by the end of March, but that deadline was pushed back by the legislature earlier this year after an error made by the Iowa Department of Revenue in the fall that had an impact on a formula used to determine how much cities, counties and schools could collect in property taxes, meaning local governments were getting less money than originally anticipated from residential property taxes in figuring out their budgets.