No New Taxes in County Budget

Ron Wilshire

Ron Wilshire

Published November 15, 2017 5:30 am
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CLARION, Pa. (EYT) — Clarion County Commissioners Ted Tharan, Wayne Brosius, and Ed Heasley Tuesday morning unanimously approved a preliminary 2018 General Fund budget that includes no tax increases.

The budget will be available for public inspection for 30 days on the county website at co.clarion.pa.us.

“I know Ed (Heasley) and Rose (Logue) spent hours on this, and Rose will present the details,” said Commissioner Tharan.

Property taxes will be same at 22 mills — 20.5 mills for the general budget and 1.5 for debt service.

“This year, the budget is $17.4 million and will be finalized on December 12,” said Budget Director Logue. “It’s higher this year, primarily because we’re running two pass-through grants from the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Project (RACP). One is possible for the YMCA at $1.75 million and the other is a $1 million possibility for the Clarion Hospital to expand their emergency room services. The money comes in and it comes out, and that’s why we call it a pass through. We still have to include it in our budget.”

Two part-time positions were added to the Clarion County District Attorney’s office in the new budget to help with the opioid and drug task force as earlier publicized.

“We also negotiated a better cost for electricity through COSTARS which helped draw down our electricity cost by about 20 percent which saved us a lot on that,” continued Logue.

“Another thing we’re doing is preparing a three-year capital improvement which will span between 2018 and 2020, and that will help with planning what improvements need to be made. It will be reviewed by commissioners each year, and they will decide which projects we can move forward without capital reserve.”

Heasley thanked Logue and the department heads working on the budget and said he felt the projected revenue is realistic and expenses are under control.

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