On July 11, the Hernando County Board of Commissioners met for a budget workshop to present and discuss the budget for Fiscal Year 2025. In a previous issue, the Sun provided an overview and delved into the sheriff’s office’s proposed budget. In part two, we will be covering the other four recommended budgets at Thursday’s meeting: property appraiser, tax collector, supervisor of elections, and the clerk of the circuit court and comptroller’s office.
The adopted constitutional budgets for 2024 and the recommended budgets for 2025 are listed below to show the change year-over-year:
Expenses:
Property Appraiser: $3,241,267 to $3,658.141
(13% increase)
Tax Collector: $3,916,000 to $4,268.500 (9% increase)
Clerk of Circuit Court: $9,268,344 to $12,591,036
(36% increase)
Supervisor of Elections: $2,687.501 to $2,774,309
(3% increase)
Sheriff: $77,895,773 to $85,208,430 (9% increase)
Total: $97,008,855 to $108,500,416 (12% increase)
Revenues:
Property Appraiser/Tax Collector/Supervisor of Elections: (0% change)
Clerk of Circuit Court: $3,977,869 to $3,577,869
(10% decrease)
Sheriff: $4,777,469 to $4,996,180 (5% increase)
Assistant Property Appraiser Kevin Johnston came before the board to answer questions regarding details of his department’s proposed plan. After an independent salary study, his department budgeted for an 11.36 percent raise to salaries to keep levels competitive with other constitutionals and property appraisers around Florida. Raises to insurance, as well as budgeting for security in response to the well-documented IT breach led to his office’s 13 percent total increase. Finance Officer Kelly Burk added that the property appraiser’s office also budgeted $90,000 for the restructuring of their Brooksville front office, “that is not up to standard.” Any funds not used will be returned to the county.
The discussion with Supervisor of Elections Shirley Anderson was a short one. The board did not have any questions. Commissioners Steve Champion and Brian Hawkins simply offered their congratulations to Anderson and company on how they set up their budget. “I think they just do an outstanding job. I know it is a minimal budget and I know you are kind of handcuffed because you got elections and you do what you got to, but they always do a fantastic job,” said Champion.
Next up, current Chief Deputy of Finance and Tax Collector Elect Amy Blackburn presented her office’s budget. The Tax Collector’s office is funded by the revenue that is accrued from basic fees from state agency licensure. As Commissioner Hawkins explained it, her department takes the overall taxable revenue of the county, percentages of which go toward their budget, “then if they have money to give back, they do.” Hawkins congratulated her department for being able to give back some amount of excess nearly every year. Last year, the tax collector’s office returned $3 million, Blackburn noted. While a portion went to the general fund, the rest ($2.2 million) went to the board and the rest of the departments.
Clerk of Circuit Court Doug Chorvat discussed the variety of reasons that led to his department’s increase (36 percent), much like the rest of the constitutionals. This is due to a variety of factors, not the least of which includes the massive data breach that rocked the county earlier this year. In next year’s budget, Chorvat planned for four positions for the ERP project because he does not currently have the staff “to keep the wheels running and work on this project.” He does not want this endeavor to be stretched out over the next four years, so the new jobs would help that.
Chorvat noted that prior to increases in health insurance and CareATC, as well as the IT outage earlier this year, his team was looking at a 3.2 percent increase. However, rising prices regarding software that Chorvat’s squad manages for the county have resulted in a 36 percent increase in the chart above. As with everything, the prices have skyrocketed. As a result, Chorvat has budgeted 15 percent for all software package increases as this was the average amount that his team estimates these services will cost.
The software that “runs the back end – the magic,” as Chorvat called it, cost his team $28,000 this past year. Next year, this will cost the department $76,000. He noted that these services are not widely offered, so the companies “know they have your hands tied,” said Chorvat. PDF software, too, has ballooned from $75 per user to $104 in the span of a year. Since everything else has gone up, Chorvat’s department has increased its budget to accommodate these price hikes.
Chorvat’s office is also looking to make a digital storage increase, as this could have allowed the county to get its systems back up and running quicker after the cyberattack if they had. In the same vein, his team is also budgeting for a three-year contract for $859,000 in enhanced security systems. “We need to fix it, rather than trying to go through this again. That’s something I don’t want to go through,” said Chorvat.
The board will hold more meetings throughout the year to fine tune the details on the budget for FY2025 with the next such workshop set to take place on August 6 if necessary.
