Following committee sign off last week, the Sangamon County Board is set to approve its 2027 fiscal year budget on Nov. 10.
County Administrator Brian McFadden gave the board’s Finance Committee a rundown of the upcoming budget’s major revenues and expenses during its Nov. 5 meeting, in addition to informing committee members of other key items. The committee budget presentation also included a revised estimate of $16.7 million in sales tax revenue to fund the county’s Mental Health Board.
“We’re going to be a little bit ahead of where we projected on revenue, but we also had the same situation on the expense side,” McFadden said. “We do think we’re going to finish the year with some addition to our reserves, and that’s always our goal every year – to keep those reserves healthy and in place for emergencies that we sometimes have to deal with.
“The all-funds budget, historically, is nowhere near $206 million, but when you push in all the capital work we’ve been doing, that inflates that number,” he said. The county has two outstanding bonds to pay off, “the one we did in 2010 which was for the public health building… then of course the $41.9 (million) that we borrowed for The HUB and to redo this building.”
Separately, McFadden touted his expectation for a fifth straight year of property tax rate reductions.
“We’ve had four straight years of rate reductions, which is pretty unprecedented, and we think we’re probably going to have a fifth year once all these factors come in – so five straight years that we’re asking you guys to vote for a levy that will reduce the rate that taxpayers paid to Sangamon County on their tax bill. (That) doesn’t mean your bill’s going to go down, because your bill depends on a lot of factors: the value of your property, the overall EAV growth, but the levy that we adopt is one of the big factors and right now we think it’s going to generate a rate reduction.”
The Sangamon County Sheriff’s office, the largest budgeted department in the county, will see a $2.7 million budget increase.
“About $1 million of that increase is payroll, $530,000 of it is overtime. Jail supplies, medical costs are up over $400,000 – healthcare-related costs in the sheriff’s office (are) up $360,000, so those four items right there account for really the majority of that increase,” McFadden told the committee. “The overtime increase, as I mentioned, is being driven partly by the increase in salaries.”
The County will save about $430,000 per year by eliminating the County Recorder’s office, according to McFadden; that’s roughly equal to what the County Board is expecting to receive in annual property tax payments from the CyrusOne data center in Talkington Township.
The savings exceeds the amount that was originally estimated when the idea first surfaced, which McFadden described as “good budget relief for the County and for the taxpayers.”
McFadden also noted other obscure expenses, such as the cost of paying for court-appointed attorneys for about two dozen individuals between the ages of 16 and 29 charged with violent gang activity under the Illinois Street Gang and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Law (RICO).
Because of conflicts of interest, the Public Defender’s office cannot represent the more than 20 individuals charged by State’s Attorney John Milhiser, McFadden said.
“We estimate the cost of that, and this is a wide range, to be probably a minimum of $1.2 million dollars to maximum of $3 million… bottom line, per state law, we’re going to be paying for these court-appointed attorneys and that’s not budgeted, that’ll come out of reserves. That’s part of the reason why we build reserves, for things like this that come down the pike,” he said.
The County’s fiscal year runs from Dec. 1 through Nov. 30. See the full county budget here:
