Jasper County’s FY24 budget increases due to renewed focus on secondary roads

Jasper County has lowered its tax levy from the current fiscal year, but the governing body is still taking in more tax dollars than it was in previous budgets. Brandon Talsma, chair of the board of supervisors, says the county is taking in about $166,000 more, and a large part of it is because of secondary roads.

Specifically, the county is focusing its efforts on the engineer’s Granular Roads Assessment and Maintenance Strategy (GRAMS), which divides gravel road maintenance into different categories, identifies which roads fit into those categories and how often the roadways are addressed, among other things.

The board of supervisors on April 25 certified the fiscal year 2024 budget in a 3-0 vote without any objections from the public.

For the past few years, the county has made secondary roads a priority, and its budget of almost $14 million in fiscal year 2024 — comprised of various funds, not just property tax dollars —shows supervisors are continuing that trend. But the implementation of GRAMS by far is the biggest change in next year’s budget.

The secondary roads department has a few million dollars of American Rescue Plan Act funds earmarked for a new engineer’s office, but the GRAMS program is funded entirely through property tax dollars and reserve funds; Talsma said the secondary roads reserve account is in good shape to supplement the program.

“It is very, very healthy,” Talsma said. “So we decided to take a ratcheted approach to where we’re going to spend down some of those funds in the reserves and couple that with the property tax dollars to get GRAMS to a point to where it’s sustainable, instead of saying, ‘We’re raising tax dollars by $700,000.’”

For the past two weeks, the county has hosted public meetings in the small towns to inform citizens of the new plan, which has been discussed and workshopped for months on end. Talsma attended the April 20 meeting in Kellogg. From what he can tell, feedback was mixed.

“Some people understand it and are deeply appreciative of what we’re doing and the fact that we’re actually trying to formulate this strategy and start the ball moving forward,” Talsma said. “Other people just complain about why their road isn’t one of the roads getting stabilized or why their road isn’t getting done first.”

As the program progresses, the county will hold annual meetings updating citizens about the program in February and March.

The reason supervisors are putting a stronger emphasis on gravel roads is because in years past the maintenance was “put on the back burner” and neglected in favor of other projects or budget cuts, Talsma said. As a result, the granular road maintenance fell behind.

“It’s something that we should have never shifted focus from, but the county did. And now we need to re-concentrate back on and double down on them,” he said. “Especially now when we’ve got more people living in the country, you’ve got higher yields than ever before, which means more tonnage and traffic on roads.”

Coupled with heavier agriculture equipment, the more than 900 miles of gravel roads in Jasper County are taking a beating.

The county’s tax levy has mostly remained the same or lowered depending on the year, and Talsma has said in the past that this move is deliberate. As valuations increased, it would only be natural for governments to take in more property taxes. The county adjusted its levy to account for the new valuations.

Which meant the county was working with about the same amount of money it was using in previous years. But fiscal year 2024 is different. The tax levy was still lower, but the dollar amount the county is collecting is higher. Talsma said it is less than a 1 percent increase to the county budget.

“I’m happy with that,” Talsma said. “The fact that we’re able to implement the GRAMS program, which is pretty substantial, money wise, on top of keeping up with all of that and we’re only having to increase our overall dollar asking by less than 1 percent — I’m pretty darn happy with that.”

Keeping the budget in line with the increased valuations from the past few years was not feasible so long as the supervisors wanted to continue with its new approach to gravel roads. Talsma said inflation, the increased input costs and union-negotiated pay raises certainly played a factor as well.

Completing the new administration building has also been beneficial to the budget. Now that staff have moved in to the new office building and have been operational for almost a year, Talsma said it prevented supervisors from levying millions of dollars a year in capital projects in the annex building.

“We were able to spread that out with the administration building and still be debt free in six years. Instead of having to levy $1.5 million in property taxes we were able to drastically decrease that to like $600,000. Shifting to a more long-term, strategic approach has allowed us to accomplish what we wanted,” Talsma said.