The Kane County Board Finance and Budget Committee voted on Monday to recommend a sales tax referendum question be put on the ballot in April.
The recommendation comes as the committee looks for ways to solve the county’s budget shortfalls, which are projected to be around $28 million in 2025. County officials said the proposed sales tax would bring in over $50 million per year if it is approved by voters, which would likely fix the county’s long-term revenue problems.
Those funds would go toward public safety, which is where the majority of the county’s dollars go, freeing up other revenue streams to go toward other county operations, officials have said.
The committee recommended a sales tax rate of 0.75%, which would add an extra 75 cents in taxes to every $100 spent on items covered by the tax in Kane County.
Now that the Kane County Board Finance and Budget Committee has recommended putting the Special County Retailers’ Occupation Tax, as it is called, on the spring ballot, it is set to go before the board’s Executive Committee which will decide whether or not to send it to the full Kane County Board for final approval.
If the Kane County Board approves, the issue would go before voters in the April 1, 2025, consolidated election.
In a presentation to the Finance and Budget Committee on Monday, Kane County Finance Director Kathleen Hopkinson said the recommended sales tax would put revenues over expenses until at least 2030, when her budget projections end.
However, even if the sales tax is approved by voters, it would not help to balance the budget until 2026, according to Hopkinson’s presentation.
To make up for the projected $28 million revenue shortfall in the 2025 budget, the Finance and Budget Committee has explored a number of options over the last several months, but the issue has been the particular focus of three special committee meetings held since July 30.
At a special meeting on Aug. 12, committee members asked many county offices and departments to find a combined $5 million in cuts or to prove why the requested cuts were not possible. At that meeting many public safety officials spoke against significant budget cuts, saying that staff would need to be cut and mandated services would suffer.
Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser said at the time that those cuts could also result in a lawsuit against the County Board for refusing to adequately fund public safety.
Kane County offices and departments had until Friday to submit their proposed cuts, and Hopkinson said most departments did respond to the Finance and Budget Committee requests.
However, in total, only around $554,000 in cuts were found, according to Hopkinson’s presentation at Monday’s meeting. Most of the cut funds came from the Information Technology Department, which she said chose to delay a major software purchase for one year.
Only the Information Technology Department and the Supervisor of Assessor’s Office made the full requested cuts, Hopkinson’s presentation showed.
The Finance Department and the County Board Office also made cuts, but not the fully requested amount, according to the presentation.
The other nine offices or departments that were asked to make cuts – which includes the county’s three biggest spenders: the Sheriff’s Office, the State’s Attorney’s Office and the Building Management Department — made no cuts at all, according to the presentation.
After reviewing what county offices and departments said they could cut, the Finance and Budget Committee recommended the 2025 budget’s deficit be reduced by making the $554,000 in cuts, by moving roughly $4 million in RTA transportation sales tax revenue from the Kane County Department of Transportation to the county’s general fund and by walking back on transferring almost $4.35 million toward capital projects.
Kane County Department of Transportation’s Thomas Rickert told committee members on Monday that the recommended cuts to his department would effectively stop all capital projects and shift the department to become almost completely maintenance focused.
In the long-term, capital project funds are also needed county-wide, according to Hopkinson. She said these funds are used to replace failing equipment, complete needed maintenance work and other similar projects.
Even with the cuts and shuffling of funds, Kane County would still need to use around $19.4 million of reserve funds to balance the budget, according to the Finance and Budget Committee’s recommendation on Monday.
In 2023, Kane County used around $11 million in reserve funds to balance the budget, and projections show that around $16 million will need to be used to balance the 2024 budget, Hopkinson’s presentation showed.
According to that presentation, Kane County should have roughly $71.6 million in reserve funds at the start of the 2025 budget cycle.
Hopkinson has previously said that significant cuts or new revenue will need to be found before 2027 to avoid digging into required 90-day reserves. For the 2025 budget, those required reserves equal roughly $36.2 million, according to Hopkinson’s presentation.
If voters disapprove of the recommended 0.75% sales tax, there would likely need to be significant cuts to county staffing in the 2026 budget, committee members said on Monday.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com