Proposed Solid Waste Budget Retains Assessment Model, Includes Recovery Of Unpaid Previous Year Assessments
 | Author:
Linda Kent, MT43 News Staff Reporter
MT43 News Correspondent |
Linda Kent
MT43 News Staff Reporter
Broadwater County property owners will likely see a 30 percent increase per solid waste assessment on their tax bills in the coming fiscal year, along with additional measures to recover unbilled assessments from previous tax years, County Administrative Officer Bill Jarocki to the county commission June 5.
What they won’t see – at least not in the fiscal year that runs from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025 – is a pay-as-you-throw solid waste service or the closure of any of the county’s five current collection sites.
Jarocki told the commission that the Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) received information in early May from the Department of Revenue that the county could increase its assessments prior to county tax bills being generated in the fall. The budget proposal includes an increase in assessment value from approximately $185 to $241.72.
In general, each residential property owner pays one assessment on their annual county tax bill. Businesses and other entities with larger likely waste outputs are billed for multiple assessments.
The solid waste enterprise fund, which operates independently of the larger county budget, saw deficits for fiscal years 2023 and 2022, and likely will have a significant deficit for the current fiscal year due to an error which caused some county solid waste users to be underbilled for their solid waste assessment.
The proposed FY 2025 budget estimates just over $250,000 in recovered revenue that went unbilled in previous tax years.
While those two efforts will help close the solid waste budget gap for the upcoming fiscal year. Jarocki indicated that recovery efforts would likely only be in place for one year. He said the SWAB will continue investigating alternatives to the existing system that will both repay previous years’ deficits and continue to support the solid waste fund’s operating in the black moving forward.
The $1.089 million preliminary budget, which represents nearly a tenth of the county’s total budget for FY2025, had a public hearing June 11 and will be finalized and presented to the commission June 26 for adoption following a public hearing on the county’s budget as a whole.
