Clarion County commissioners on Tuesday unanimously adopted a final 2022 budget that includes a tax decrease of one-half mill.
The spending plan totals $23,208,014, and commissioner Ted Tharan said the tax cut isn’t in the general real estate tax but in the 1.5 mill debt service tax. That tax will now be one mill.
The total real estate tax will be 21.5 mills in 2022.
The preliminary county budget was $22,997,347. The increase in the final budget came from the $200,000 sale of the former Hollobaugh Beer Distributor building.
The county had purchased the property on Route 322 west of Clarion Borough as a possible site for the county’s new Emergency Management center. That plan was scrapped when the county bought the former Sorce warehouse near Shippenville.
County budget director Rose Logue said the final budget also reflected a solid waste grant, a payment to consultant Delta Development in the amount of $120,000 and a $10,000 payment to the International Association of Assessing Officers.
The revenue fell short of balancing the budget. Logue said earlier the county has a surplus from 2021 and will use budget reserves to balance the 2022 spending plan.
Commissioner Ed Heasley noted that $11.4 million of the budget is for salaries and benefits. Logue said earlier the county saw increases in health insurance, utility costs, comprehensive insurance and contractual labor costs.
The budget includes dedicated grant money totaling $8,257,341. The grants include the American Rescue Plan and grants for several transportation projects.
Assessment planned
In other business Tuesday, the county took the first step toward a full, physical, assessment of the county by hiring the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) at a cost of $50,000.
Tharan said a physical assessment of the county hasn’t been done since 1975.
“They kept kicking it down the road,” he said. “We can no longer keep doing that.”
“We did a fly-over in 2014 and 2021 but you miss things with that,” said commissioner Ed Heasley.
The assessment means a physical canvas of the entire county.
“We want to make it uniform for everyone,” said Zach Stiglitz, the county’s chief assessor. “This needs to be done.”
Stiglitz said the county is using data from 1975. He said the assessments at that time were done by elected officials, many of whom had no training in assessing property.
“All we want is for it to be fair,” said Tharan.
There are only two companies in the state that do the assessments, and the actual assessment could take several years.
“It isn’t something that can be done overnight,” said Heasley.
The cost of the assessment won’t be known until the proposals have been received.