Latest / Saluda County Unplugged / The County Budget Part 1 - What Does the County Budget Really Pay For?
Transcript
- Josh Morton: Have you ever stopped to think about how many county services you use in a single day? Probably not. Because when county government is working well, you really don't have to think about it. This morning, you probably drove on a county maintained road. If something had happened on your drive to work, you would have expected nine one one to answer immediately. You'd expect deputies, paramedics, and volunteer firefighters to show up within minutes. Later today, someone in Saluda County will pay their property taxes, someone else will record a deed, someone will apply for a building permit, and a jury may report to the courthouse. At first glance, those all seem like completely separate things, but they're not. Every one of those services is funded through the same county budget. Over the next few episodes, we're going to pull back the curtain and show you exactly how that works. We're going to answer questions like where the money comes from, where it goes. And what has changed in this year's budget? And maybe most importantly, what your county government actually does with the tax dollars you pay. Starting right now on Saluda County Unplugged Welcome back to Saluda County Unplugged, where we shine a light on how your county government works. I'm Rachel. And I'm Josh. And today is the beginning of a five-part look at something that affects every single resident in Saluda County, the annual county budget. Now, before anybody starts thinking, great, they're going to spend 20 minutes reading spreadsheets. Don't worry. That's not what this series is. This isn't going to be an accounting lesson. It's really a guide to understanding county government. Now, If you're the kind of person who loves digging into spreadsheets and line items, don't worry, we are going to get there. We'll wrap up this series with a final episode where we'll actually open the county budget and walk through the numbers together. But before those numbers mean anything, we thought it was important to answer a much more basic question. What are those numbers actually paying for? Because here's what we discovered while preparing for these episodes. The budget isn't really about the money. It's about the services. And once you realize that, the budget starts making a lot more sense. So here's where we're headed over the next few weeks. Today, we're answering the question, what is a county budget really paying for? Next week, we'll follow what happens after someone dials 911. Then we'll look at everything county government is doing while most of us are going about our day. After that, we'll walk through the biggest changes in this year's budget. And finally, we'll wrap things up with a bonus episode where we dive into the numbers themselves and show you how to really read the county budget. So let's get started. Josh, so I'll be honest, before we started working on this series, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the county budget. But once we really started digging into it, I realized I'd been looking at it the wrong way. I always thought of the budget as a list of expenses. Same here, but the more you study it, the more you realize that's not really what it is. The county budget is actually a service plan. Every dollar that's budgeted exists because the county has committed to providing a service to the people of Saluda County. Think about EMS. The county isn't budgeting for ambulance rides. It's budgeting to make sure trained paramedics, ambulances, medications, fuel, medical equipment, radios, and everything else needed to respond are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The same thing is true for the sheriff's office. The budget isn't paying for one deputy to answer one call. It's paying to make sure deputies are available whenever somebody needs help. The Roads and Bridges Department isn't budgeting for one pothole repair. It's budgeting to have people, equipment, and materials ready to maintain county roads throughout the year. That's probably one of the biggest takeaways. The budget isn't buying individual services. It's buying the county's ability to provide those services whenever they're needed. And I think that's a really important way to think about it. Instead of asking, why does this department cost so much? Maybe the better question is what service does this department provide? Or even what would happen if this service wasn't here? That's a completely different conversation. Let's start with another misconception that is pretty surprising. When people think about county government funding, they usually think about property taxes. And yes, property taxes are an important part of the budget, but they are far from the only source of revenue. In fact, property taxes account for less than half of Saluda County's general fund. 53.5% comes from a combination of local option sales tax, EMS billing, state aid, Fees, grants, fee in lieu of tax agreements, and other revenue sources. County government really isn't funded by a single stream of money. It's funded by a combination of many different sources. And here's one of the biggest things we discovered while comparing this year's budget to last year's. The county's general fund increased by about one point two million dollars, growing from just over eighteen million to approximately nineteen point two million. Now, if you only heard those numbers, you might naturally assume property taxes increased by about the same amount. But that's not what happened. Property tax revenue only increased by about two hundred fifty-seven thousand dollars, which works out to roughly twenty-two percent of the overall increase. So naturally we started asking ourselves, where did the rest come from? And the answer is a little bit from a lot of different places. Sales tax, EMS collections, state aid, fee in lieu of tax revenue, vehicle taxes. And there were also a couple of accounting changes in building codes and the county airport that made the budget appear larger even though county operations didn't actually change. But the big takeaway here is that while the county budget increased by 1.2 million, the increase in property taxes was much more modest. One thing we learned pretty quickly when analyzing the budget is that comparing budgets from year to year isn't always as simple as comparing two numbers. Sometimes the budget grows because the county is providing a new service. Sometimes it grows because of inflation or contractual cost increases. And sometimes the budget just presents information differently than it did before. A great example of this is the building codes budget. This year, building permit revenue and the related inspection expenses are shown in the budget in a way that they weren't previously. Another example is airport fuel. The budget now shows both the revenue from fuel sales and the expense of purchasing that fuel. If you only looked at the totals, it might appear that those departments suddenly became much larger. In reality, those are primarily just accounting changes. The budget is simply presenting those transactions more transparently. And that's one of the reasons it is so important to not judge the budget by one number alone. So once the money comes in, where does it actually go? One of the biggest findings from our analysis is that the majority of the general fund supports public safety and the justice system. And that's a lot broader than just the Sheriff's Office. Exactly. When we say public safety, we're talking about law enforcement, the detention center, EMS, emergency communications, volunteer fire service emergency management, the coroner's office, and all of the court functions that keep the justice system operating. When you put those pieces together, they account for about 60 % of the county's general fund. I don't think that's surprising. If you asked most people what the county's highest priorities should be, I think public safety would be at the top of that list. The rest of the budget supports everything else that keeps county government operating. Roads and bridges, county buildings, the library, planning and building inspections, finance, human resources, the treasurer, the auditor and assessor's offices, elections, technology, veterans affairs, economic development, and a long list of other services. that many people really may never think about until they need them. Now here's something that I think will interest a lot of people. The title of a budget doesn't always tell you exactly what's inside of it. And it isn't intended to try and hide anything. It's just that if things weren't grouped together to some extent, the budget document would be excessively long and even more confusing. Take the County Council budget for example. If you were reading that part of the budget for the first time, you might assume that that is simply the money budgeted for the members of County Council. But that's actually not the case. That budget also includes the Administrative Office that supports County Government, including the County Administrator, Assistant County Administrator and Clerk to Council, Human Resources Coordinator, Financing and Purchase Coordinator, and a number of other administrative expenses. So the title of that page doesn't really tell the whole story. And that's true throughout the budget. One department name may actually represent several different services or several budgets may work together to provide one service. That's one of the reasons we wanted to do this series. Budgets are written for accountants. We're trying to translate them into plain English. Josh, one thing I kept coming back to while we were preparing these episodes was most people only interact with county government occasionally. Maybe when they renew a tag, maybe when they get called for jury duty, maybe when they call 911. But county government is working every single day, whether you notice it or not. That's exactly right. Success in county government is often invisible. Nobody notices when the radios work. Nobody notices when payroll is processed correctly. Nobody notices when the courthouse opens on time. Nobody notices when a culvert survives a heavy rainstorm because it was maintained properly. People usually only notice government when something goes wrong. And the budget is really the county's plan for making sure that those things continue working every single day. Josh, after spending all this time analyzing the budget, what's one thing that stuck with you the most? Honestly, it's that county government is so much more interconnected than most people realize. You really can't separate one department from another. Finance supports everybody. Information technology supports everybody. Roads and Bridges supports everybody. Public safety agencies all rely on each other. The budget isn't a collection of independent departments. It is one organization working together to serve the community. For me, I think it's really realizing that the budget isn't about buying equipment or paying bills. It's about making sure services are available whenever they're needed. So, in the next episode in this series, we're going to take the largest chunk of the budget, which is public safety, and really dive into it. We're going to do that by following what happens when someone dials 911 and show how the sheriff's office, EMS, the detention center, volunteer firefighters, dispatch, and emergency management all work together as one integrated public safety system. Even if you've lived in Saluda County your entire life, I think you're going to learn something new. Thanks for listening to Saluda County Unplugged. Have questions or an idea for an upcoming episode? Email us at publicinfo at salutacounty.sc.gov. We'd love to hear from you. And remember, please return your shopping cart, society notices. We'll see you next week.