York County administrators outline proposed tax‑rate increase, possible cuts and CIP tradeoffs

York County administrators told the Board of Supervisors on March 27 that their recommended budget includes a proposed real‑estate tax rate that would raise county revenues to cover operating needs and capital projects, but they also provided supervisors with incremental options for reducing the proposed rate by half a cent up to two cents and identified the program and CIP consequences for each step.

County administrators described a multistage process of internal review and reductions that produced the current CIP and operating budget recommendations. The county administrator said senior staff and department teams had already trimmed requests through a combination of scope reductions and timing shifts and then presented to the board a series of additional options for elected supervisors to consider if they seek to lower the proposed tax rate.

"These are not my recommendations," the county administrator told the board when presenting the list of potential cuts. "I think the right budget is the one you saw on the eighteenth," he said, noting that the options had been prepared at the…