Carbon County is preparing its 2025 budget, and is also looking at a tax anticipation loan to help cover the first few months of next year.

Last week, the commissioners accepted two proposals for a 2025 tax anticipation note.

The first proposal was from Stevens & Lee of Reading to serve as the bond counsel for the process at a cost of $10,000 plus additional expenses up to $250 due at the time of closing.

The second proposal was from FSL Public Finance of Reading to act as the financial adviser regarding the anticipation note. The cost for this service is $7,500.

Commissioner Wayne Nothstein, who has spoken out previously about running down the fund balance that the county had, said that this tax anticipation note is what he had hoped to avoid when he urged previous commissioners to increase taxes instead of using the fund balance.

“As you see, we have another $17,500 plus other possible costs for financing our budget between January and April or May when we have no tax revenues in because we don’t have a good, solid fund balance,” he said. “This will not go away.”

He noted that he believes this will be a reoccurring event annually.

“We’re going to have to pay these people to do this. That’s $17,500 we’re going to have to spend because we don’t have enough money in the fund balance. And the other issue is costs keep going up so it’s really going to be a real tough budget year for everyone.”

Nothstein added that this action now was one of the reasons in previous budgets that he voted against deferring tax increases and instead using the fund balance.

Nothstein has been very vocal over the last few years when previous administrations decided to run down the fund balance to offset any necessary tax increases.

Earlier this year, after the new board of commissioners was seated, the board voted to reopen the budget and voted 2-1 for a 0.75-mill tax increase to help cut back on what was coming out of the fund balance on the previously adopted budget.

At that time, Commissioner Rocky Ahner said he would not vote for a tax increase under the reopened budget because he felt the county should have given additional raises to the employees and has too much in its fund balance.

Prior to that, the county had not approved a tax increase since 2020, when the prior board took office.

The county will pass a preliminary 2025 spending plan later this month, with a final adoption in December.