Kootenai County holds FY2026 budget kickoff; assessor asks to correct tax-roll statements

Kootenai County commissioners on June 2 received a preliminary FY2026 budget overview from Finance Director Brandy Falcon and heard a public comment request from County Assessor Bayla Kovacs to amend an earlier statement about tax-roll errors.

Falcon said the materials presented were an initial “first look” rather than a package for final deliberations and laid out high-level revenue, expense and new-request figures that the board will use to balance the budget between now and its August adoption timeline. “We won't really be doing any deliberations today on cuts to the budget, but just giving you, a snapshot of overall where the budget stands,” Falcon said.

The preliminary summary shows multiple levy scenarios: at a 0% property-tax increase the county would need to cut about $1.2 million; at 1% cuts of about $651,000; at 2% cuts of about $31,000; and at a 3% increase a projected surplus of $589,000. Falcon counted a separate line, “levy for judgments,” of $299,330 tied to prior lawsuit-related shortfalls the county may recapture under state law. Falcon also presented revenue assumptions including a 1.28% increase in state revenue sharing (about $111,000), a 1.86% increase in sales tax (about $83,000), a 2% decrease in liquor revenue (about $80,000), and interest revenue budgeted at $5,500,000 (about a $968,000 increase over FY2025).

Personnel and operating figures were emphasized as major drivers. Falcon said the loaded personnel budget is about $91 million (including taxes and benefits), with $2.2 million in loaded overtime costs, about $582,000 for temporary/seasonal staff and roughly $6.2 million attributed to open positions. She reported notable vacancies: the jail had 20 open positions when she ran the report; 9-1-1 had 13 vacancies; the prosecutor's office had five; community development four; and patrol three. Falcon said department personnel requests include 29 new personnel requests totaling 25.5 full-time equivalents with a loaded cost of about $2.5 million plus $610,000 in onboarding costs; 52 requests to change existing positions would produce a net loaded savings of about $177,000.

Falcon said operating requests total about $2 million above FY2025 (about $1.6 million of that in general government and roughly $1.3 million attributed to an increase in the jail medical contract). Capital requests total about $12.3 million, with $5.7 million for general government and $6.6 million for the solid-waste enterprise fund; Falcon noted solid waste is enterprise-funded and not property-tax supported. She said only about $986,000 of the $5.7 million in general-government capital requests could be shifted from property tax to fund balance under current assignments.

Falcon reviewed key budget deadlines and the staff-proposed deliberation timetable: capital requests review on June 11, an Alliant Benefits presentation on July 9 about the health plan increase, a preliminary balanced budget presentation on July 31 (after which matrix/pay changes become difficult to reverse), a public budget hearing on Aug. 27 and final adoption on Aug. 29. Falcon reminded the board that the auditor relies on assessor-provided values for levy calculations and that her office will use statutory deadlines to obtain final taxable values before publishing the levy.

During public comment, Bayla Kovacs, Kootenai County assessor, asked the board to amend the record of an earlier Board of Equalization meeting and correct statements she had made. Kovacs said the county assessor’s office provided corrected values to the treasurer on Dec. 3, 2024, and cited Idaho Code 63-1303 in explaining statutory roles for the treasurer and commissioners in amending tax bills. She also corrected an earlier characterization of the cause of an error affecting 12 parcels: while a separate configuration issue impacted more than 1,000 parcels, Kovacs said the specific error affecting the dozen parcels resulted from a methodology mistake when entering Board of Equalization changes into the ProVal module, not the unrelated IT configuration problem.

Commissioner Naughton raised a caution about using the full interest projection as ongoing revenue, saying she would be “comfortable at this point carving out $2,000,000 of that $5.5 [million] for one-time expense,” warning that relying on interest as ongoing revenue could create future fiscal risk.

No formal motions or votes occurred on June 2. Falcon asked commissioners to come prepared to approve or cut requests in upcoming meetings; she said she will continue to provide updated printed summaries and make staff available for one-on-one follow-ups.

The commissioners set a six-meeting deliberation schedule to balance the FY2026 budget by the July 23 internal deadline Falcon cited, with public hearings and adoption slated in late August.