Phil Montgomery, director of the ExecutiveDepartment of Finance and Budget, told the Summit County Council that the county's general fund is forecast to finish 2025 modestly above 2024 but that risks could push the county into deficit in 2028 and 2029. "So this is where we stand with the general fund through 06/30/2025," Montgomery said during the council meeting.
The forecast shows property tax revenue projected 5.7% above last year and a December-year projection of $172.9 million in general fund revenue, a 1.5% increase over 2024. Montgomery said that, with advances removed, the more comparable figure is $171.6 million, or a 3.6% gain. "I'm showing professional services up 5% as well as appointed attorney fees up 5%," he added when describing expense estimates.
Montgomery highlighted several specific revenue and cost drivers: property transfer tax is uncertain; sales tax growth is essentially flat (he conservatively projects a 0.5% increase for 2025); and parking deck revenue is down year over year. He said investment earnings are already trending downward and represent one of the county's two largest near-term fiscal risks, the other being conveyance or real-estate transaction fees. "As we move through with all those big dollar projects like the board of elections and redoing this buildingthat's a lot of cash we're going to be pushing out the door. So as we do that, our investment earnings are going to tumble," Montgomery said.
On criminal-justice costs, Montgomery said private appointed-attorney fees were up about 3.1% year over year while payments related to the public defender contract rose substantially. He pointed to a council-approved budget increase for the public defender's office under Andrea Whitaker and to recent shifts in the statewide reimbursement rate that supported higher reimbursements earlier in the year. "Because of where the statewide reimbursement rates were they actually bumped for January through Aprilthey bumped the reimbursement rate up to 93%. So we shot back up. But now, starting with the May reimbursementsit's lowered back down to 82%," he said.
On expenditures, Montgomery said salaries are forecast up about 10% for the year, overtime is down 26% from last year but remains roughly $1.5 million over budget, and health-care costs are up approximately 3.7%. He described an accounting recode needed to move roughly $2 million between professional services and attorney-fee lines and said the December forecast shown to council already incorporates that correction.
Montgomery said he will update the forecast monthly and return to council in the next quarter with September numbers. No new policy changes were proposed during the presentation; council accepted the financial update as part of the meeting record and later adopted routine appropriation adjustments on the agenda.