At Thursday night’s McLean County Board meeting, County Administrator Cassy Taylor presented a proposed $127 million budget for fiscal year 2023 to the board for consideration.
Board members have the rest of the month to review the budget and discuss things among themselves and others in preparation for next month’s committee meetings. At the committee meetings board members will discuss the budget items pertaining to their particular committees as a group.
County committee chairs will then present recommendations to the full county board at their October meeting for discussion and action. The county budget’s fiscal year is based on the calendar year ending on December 31st.
The administrations proposed budget to the dollar is $126,752,804. It would increase the tax rate $0.00105 per $100.00. For the average home in McLean County valued at $190,000 that would be a tax increase of $2.
Board member Chuck Erickson believes the county can do better. To propose a budget that would require no tax increase at all the proposed budget would only need to be cut by $47,010. He believes the board should easily be able to get to that number.
The proposed budget values the county workforce. Taylor said in her presentation, “In 2022 the county board approved a compensation study to be completed. As a result of that study, the FY 23 recommended budget includes increases for unrepresented county personnel that denotes market norms and hybrid parity adjustments.”
“The Compensation and Classification study has provided a salary structure that aligns the county more closely with current market salary averages, while also adhering to our existing Compensation Plan methodologies,” Taylor said.
Erickson agrees with the salary adjustments. He told Cities 92.9, “McLean County is going to have to become more competitive in what it pays people because we’ve got Rivian and everybody else that’s paying people more money. So McLean County government is going to have to pay some of its employees more money just to keep them.”
We asked Taylor if any new positions were being added to the budget and she told us eight additional positions were included in the proposed budget. Six are in the State’s Attorney’s office. Taylor said two new attorneys and four new legal assistants will be needed in that office just to handle the increase in work that will necessary as a result of the state passing the SAFE-T act.
Cities asked Taylor if she thought this would be enough additional personnel to handle the additional work required by the act and she replied, “Yes. We’ve consulted with our state’s attorney and our public defender and you know they live and breath it every day.”
Taylor said the administration considered the state’s attorney’s and public defender’s recommendations regarding what their staffing needs would be and adopted that into the proposed FY 23budget.
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Erickson agrees the states attorney’s office is short staffed and that they need more personnel. He also believes more personnel are needed in the Circuit Clerk’s office.
We also asked Taylor if the increased workload that will result from the SAFE-T act required additional judges. She told us that would be a matter for the state and supreme court but did add that she hasn’t heard anything regarding that particular matter.
