The Monroe County commissioners passed the 2025 budget Wednesday morning with a tax increase of 1.5 mills.

The increase will come out to $150 for every $100,000 value of the property, Commissioner Chairman John Christy said.

The increase brings the millage rate to 5.4773 mills. Of that amount, 4.9631 mills will be used for general purposes, and the remaining 0.5142 mills has been designated for the debt service. The library millage rate will remain 0.185814 mills.

The total amount of the budget is $147.1 million, and the general fund budget is $87 million. The proposed 2025 County Liquid Fuels Budget is $457,167.

Jennifer Barclay, the county’s fiscal director, said, “Just over 90% will be utilized for general purposes and the balance will be used to satisfy our debt service obligation.”

Christy said one reason the tax increase was necessary is because the county has lost funds in real estate tax assessments due in part to appeals and lost the American Rescue Plan funds. All remaining funds from that plan must be allocated by Dec. 31.

“We were able over the last four years to take $23 million to apply to lost revenue for the county, and we were able to prop up PVM (Pleasant Valley Manor) with $6.7 million to keep that operating. This was the last year that we were able to take any of the lost revenue from the American Rescue Plan. We took $2.4 million to help make our budget whole,” Christy said.

“The good thing is that with the budget we have in place, we are able to put some money back into the general fund. We have been taking money out of the general fund, I want to say, for the past 12 years. We’re trying to right the ship and steer it in the correct direction.”

As for property tax revenue, Christy said this is the only tax the county can use to generate revenue. Unlike townships and some boroughs, counties do not have the ability to institute an earned income tax.

And although property values were reassessed in 2019, the state’s common level ratio has changed to the point that the county no longer brings in enough revenue through property taxes.

“Every year, the state puts out a common level ratio and when we did our reassessment, we were at 100%,” Christy said. “In 2022, the common level ratio went to 60.5%. … That has since gone down to 50.1%, so what the county has to do is take on the task once again of a reassessment.”

Since the county has fairly recent information from the last reassessment, it can do a paper reassessment, and not have to hire an agency to do the reassessment.

“What you do is you look at your current pricing and what the value of the houses are, then you can readjust your tax structure to meet that,” Christy said. “And the commissioners have put forth that this is the direction we’re going to go, so people realize that in the future.”

Salaries and the need to hire additional staff are also contributing to the tax increase.

Commissioner Sharon Laverdure said, “Up until last year when we raised the taxes a half a mill, it had been 12 years prior to that point. And in understanding that all our employees need a raise, ... we needed to look at the salary chart.”

The county paid for a salary study in order to determine how much salaries should be, and the levels and timing of pay increases.

“We lowered all the steps, so people would get raises sooner instead of spreading everybody out. That wasn’t working, so we made some very important changes,” she said. “We’ve adjusted issues where they needed to be adjusted.”

Christy said the salary study “looked at the project as a whole and redid everybody’s classifications and how they come into a step program. The idea is you will rise more quickly in the beginning and then every two years, you go up a step on your anniversary date.”