Greetings from Le Sueur County:
As we wind down the year, the most important action the Board of Commissioners took was adopting a new budget and tax levy for 2025. After much discussion and work, the Board was able to lower the preliminary levy from 6.9 percent to a final levy increase of 3.9 percent, which marks the lowest annual levy increase in over 10 years.
The revenue increases are primarily needed to pay for salary and benefit costs of existing employees, with no plans to add additional staffing. The levy was primarily lowered by identifying one-time technology costs that are to be paid with by reserves.
The final 2025 budget adds around $1 million in additional property tax, for a total property tax levy of $28,226,921, and a total budget expending $55,236,623. In terms of overall revenues, the property tax equals around 53 percent, with 22 percent coming from State Road funds, 14 percent from miscellaneous revenues, 8 percent from Health and Human Services funds, and 3 percent from State County Program Aid.
In looking at overall budget expenditures, 40 percent of the budget goes towards general government operations which encompasses most Departments, 30 percent goes toward roads and bridges, 16 percent to Health and Human Services, 6 percent for debt service, 5 percent for Environmental Services, and 3 percent for miscellaneous.
As a reminder, the property values used to calculate 2025 property taxes is based on sales data from October 2022 through September 2023. Also, property taxes levied by the County only represents a portion of the total property tax you pay, as taxing authorities in townships, cities and schools direct the County on how much to levy for their budgets. On average, if you live in a city, around 30 percent of your total property tax goes to the County.
We do not anticipate any major property tax burden shifts, with residential still leading the way with 58.4 percent share of total tax burden, followed by agricultural at 30 percent, commercial/industrial at 7.7 percent, utilities and railroads at 2.9 percent, and apartments at 1 percent.
In non-budget related news, the Board also took the following actions on key items of business during the month of November. Adoption of two environmental policies, the first being a policy that aids low-income individuals to update their septic systems, and the second directing how resources are to be directed to develop water storage to mitigate flooding within the County.
The Board also formally approved a list of properties eligible for state property tax abatement and credits that were impacted by June flooding. They also formally requested that one property be eligible for a FEMA buy-out.
Action was also taken on approving a contract with Aging Services for Communities to provide senior citizen transportation services to medical appointments for seniors unable to drive. The Board also held a work session to discuss how to strategically invest opioid legal settlement dollars.