The Latah County Budget – FY2025

Wouldn’t you know it, Latah County has a budget hearing coming up! In this video, we briefly cover the city and county meetings from this past week, and then we dive into Latah County’s budget worksheets for the coming fiscal year! Won’t you join us?

Read the full transcript of the video below:

Wait, so there’s a county budget too?!

How’s it going y’all. Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. The whole of the city council meeting this week was shorter than the video we put out last week, and that’s saying something. Fortunately, we’ve got some county stuff to talk about as well, so let’s get right into it.

What did the city discuss at their 24-minute long meeting on Monday? First, let’s take a look at public comment.

First up, Nancy Tribble. She petitioned the council to strongly consider putting up signs to discourage disorderly conduct in friendship square, related to ongoing disputes she and her coworkers have had with other locals in that area, since their office is located right next to friendship square. Next Ben Merkle got up to speak, but was told that since the issue he wished to speak on was presently before the council as a quasi-judicial matter, he would not be allowed to speak on it now during public comment.

Given recent events, I suspect that the matter that Merkle was gonna bring up is related to some issues we brought up in a recent video. I’ll just give you the fast version. There. If you have any questions, just remember what I said in slow motion.

Following that, the only other item on the agenda, a public hearing to amend the budget for FY2024. Sarah Decker of city staff delivered the highlights. While going through the fiscal year-end process for the budget, it was discovered that the city’s general fund, sanitation fund and information systems fund had unanticipated and unappropriated fund balances. The total unaccounted for amount from all of these funds was $2,510,000.

This is money that would otherwise have been unspent from the fiscal year, as well as any unexpected revenues that were not accounted for until this final assessment of the budget. In the case of the information systems fund, this was an unanticipated grant award from the state. Therefore staff proposed to amend the FY2024 budget to accommodate both the unappropriated funds and the council-authorized grant. With no public input and minimal comments from council, this item was then approved unanimously.

The only thing left from the council was reports. This week the council highlighted the return of the U of I students, the ongoing discussions about the 6th and Jackson property, and Pride in the Park, which is taking place this Saturday at East City Park from noon to four.

The county held its monthly meeting with the department heads and elected officials this week. There are a few things to highlight from that meeting. First, Disaster Services gave an outline of the work being done in the aftermath of the Gwen and Texas Ridge fires, including seeking collaborations with other agencies and receiving federal aid to help with expenses. The sheriff also spoke about his department’s efforts to help fight the fires, mentioning that 40 or so houses are known to have burned in the fires, though none in Latah County.

The head of facilities mentioned the rearranging of some county mailing addresses and P.O. boxes related to the recent reshuffling of county departments to some different buildings. This may impact your own interactions with the county if you have mail to send them in the coming weeks, so just be aware of where you need to send things, and if you can, for the time, it might make sense to deliver your papers in person.

For the last few highlights, the Fairgrounds head reminded everyone  that we are less than 25 days out from the Latah County Fair, and the County Clerk reminded everyone about the county budget hearing taking place this coming week, and that on the election side of things, September 6th is the final day for candidates to withdraw from the race or submit as a write-in, in order to appear as an option on the ballot in November.

Speaking of the County Budget, let’s take a look at what they got!

Like the City of Moscow, Latah County also has to come up with a yearly budget, host a number of workshops on it, and approve a final version at a public hearing. In this case, the public hearing for the County FY2025 Budget is at 3pm on August 27th at the County Courthouse. 

Unlike the City of Moscow, citizens of Latah County won’t be getting a put-together packet of the budget with predictions for the coming year and explanations for financial categories and decisions made. What we have instead are more-or-less just the budget spreadsheets. 

Fortunately, the county budget is much smaller than the city’s, and so we have fewer pieces of paper to go through for this one. In fact, the county has been so kind as to feature a comprehensive summary of the budget details on their public hearing announcement for the budget, which means we have most of our information in one place. Let’s take a look!

In FY2024, the total budget for Latah County was $28,639,232.26. Going into FY2025, they are looking at a proposed budget total of $32,728,519.00. That’s an increase of about $4,089,286.

Now, what’s interesting about that increase is this. If you look at the budget numbers, you’ll notice that in each of these most recent fiscal years, the budget total each year has gone up by roughly $4 million each year. From roughly $20 million to roughly $24 million in FY2023, from roughly $24 million to roughly $28 million in FY2024, and now, from roughly $28 million to roughly $32 million in FY2025. This means that while the county budget has been increasing year by year for some time, the percent increase year by year is slowly getting smaller, as $4 million becomes a gradually smaller slice of the county’s total pie.

Now, why this regularity when it comes to new budget increases? Well, part of it has to do with the fact that the county receives a significant portion of its funds each year from the state, and the way those funds are paid out is determined at that level. The state also makes some determinations as to how the county can levy taxes and what those monies can be used for, so in a lot of ways the county is simply responding and adapting to state orders, rather than functioning as a more independent entity.

With that, let’s take a look at some details for this year and compare it to previous years. The budget worksheets are split into categories by project and service and those categories are in turn summarized in terms of county employee salaries, benefits, and additional expenses such as maintenance, travel, or materials. These three categories are themselves totaled for the county in a separate row. We’ll start there.

In FY2024, county salaries totaled $11,154,883. In FY2025, county salaries are proposed to be totaled at $11,564,567. For county employee benefits, FY2024 had them at $4,425,726, while FY2025 has them set at $4,896,182. Finally, the “other expenses” category in FY2024 totaled $13,058,623.26, while FY2025 has their proposed total be $16,267,770.

If we just take a look at the proposed budget for this coming fiscal year, we can see that county salaries comprise about 34% of the budget, with benefits and other expenses comprising about 15% and 50%. That largest third category makes sense, as it’s the category that would be composed of all county operations that aren’t directly related to staff.

The county’s budget spreadsheets contain all the data for each county department’s finances broken down line-by-line. I’d encourage you to take a look at those yourself, but for the purposes of this video, I’m just gonna share a few details from the summary.

The largest categories when it comes to budget totals for this coming fiscal year are Current Expenses, Justice, and Solid Waste Collections. These are the only categories in the county budget which break over a million dollars.

The current expenses category pertains to all of the internal operations of the county’s departments in total, with many of the costs pertaining directly to personnel and their activities. The total proposed this year for this category is $7,930,984.

The Justice category, or course, pertains to the operations of our county’s court system and law enforcement. With a good number of the staff in this section being lawyers, it shouldn’t be surprising that the majority of the expenses for justice stem from salaries. It is the largest category of the big three this year, with a proposed budget total of $11,820,991. This is over a third of the county budget as a whole. When taking into account the many expenses associated with the ongoing Brian Kohberger case, such a large percentage makes a lot of sense. 

Finally, the smallest of the big three, Solid Waste Collections. The total proposed for this coming year is $2,372,374. Now, it may seem odd that Solid Waste Collection ranks among the most expensive categories for the county. When you look at the budget worksheets, you can see that apparently, the county has experienced sharp increases in operations costs, reimbursement requirements, and program expenses. This may be related to the county contracting with a different entity this past fiscal year to take over collections operations going forward.

In the bottom corner of the budget announcement page, you can see a summary of how the county is planning to pay for the budget it’s set. If we put the expense summary from FY2024 next to the summary from FY2025, we can clearly see some of the differences going into this coming year.

Cash balance forward in FY2025 has increased by over $5.8 million, while property tax replacement has actually decreased by $1,684. Grant revenues are also looking to decrease by over $2.3 million, while county interest has increased by $135k.

Connected to all these budget documents is the County Fee Resolution. Like with the City, the public hearing for the fee resolution will be held at the same time as the public hearing for the budget, but will likely be voted on separately. The document highlights the proposed changes to fees for county services as they appear in normal county documentation.

As I looked through it, the majority of increases I saw were not particularly notable, with most fairground rental rates being increased by roughly $15 to $25. Of note were some fee increases associated with Land Use. For example, the fee for a comprehensive plan amendment is increasing from $1,000 to $1,750. The same is happening for a zoning ordinance amendment, and the county rezone fee is increasing from $550 to $1,000. We all need to spend money at the county at some point, so it’s good to give these fee increases a look yourself.

So what does all of this mean? The county doesn’t publish a budget summary like the city of Moscow does, so how should a citizen interpret these numbers? Having spent some time in the county budget workshops and seen a few of their financial conversations, I can say that a lot of the county’s decisions this year are driven by several key factors. 

Firstly, the black swan event that is the murder trial associated with Brian Kohberger and the Idaho four. While the murders may have taken place in Moscow, the county is the entity responsible for the costs associated with it, including attorney fees, travel expenses, evidence analysis, and prison costs. Since the county has to pay for these expenses, and could not have exactly planned ahead for them, they are somewhat budgeting around this item, with other objectives, departments, and projects being prioritized differently.

The trial’s not the only factor. State pressures and inflation have significantly more power to constrain the county’s spending, because the county has less funds available to it, and must respond more directly to changes in state policy. In their meetings, this means that the commissioners have more recently emphasized their desire to use county funds to maintain employee salaries at market viability when they can, a desire that could get set against the desire to expand county projects and infrastructure.

As a whole, the budget tells us that the county is a more financially stretched entity than the city of Moscow, though both bodies of government would claim that their financial practices are driven by the constraints set on them by the state and nationwide economic downturn. The impact on the county side of things will be mostly felt by those that live in the rural cities, such as Potlatch, Deary, and Kendrick, as these rely on the county directly for most if not all of their regular governmental services. One thing the county has on its side is its consistent practice of applying for outside grant funding, which should help lift some of their financial burden for particular projects. Another is that the Kohberger trial is set to begin, and perhaps conclude, before the end of the fiscal year, so our next budget could look very different with that item no longer being a factor.

Alright, y’all still with me? I know that was a bit of a whirlwind, but hopefully this helps you start to work through the county documents yourself. It’s rarely the case that folks even get eyes on the county budget before the hearing takes place, and as citizens of this county, we should probably change that. As always, we’ll have the relevant links posted with this video, and if you have any questions, please reach out. I’m Aiden Anderson with the Moscow Minutes. See you next time!