Now call to order.

I'm going to just call the names of the board members that are here.

Please say your names.

Louis Palacio present.

Eugene White.

President.

And Kyle Martada present.

At this time, the chair recognizes the quorum.

And the finance committee, Dr.

White.

Yes, uh the uh five committees to adjourn the finance committee to open all a special meeting.

Uh and so the finance committee will uh be adjourned until we complete our special meeting.

He'll re-sat still we will reset you're okay, and we will convene a public hearing.

Yes, Campbell, would you please be present for the 2026 library budget?

Good morning.

Um, I'd like to invite um Mr.

Mike Water, he is our advisor for a long-term plan.

He's gonna review our long-term plan prior to me doing the budget.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, Mike.

How are you this morning?

Good, thank you.

Good to see some familiar faces from last year.

Um this is obviously without saying been the most interesting year I have experienced in my career in terms of legislation that was passed and trying to sort through the details of that legislation, and um each each unit I work with is somewhat unique.

The legislation doesn't affect everyone, everyone the same way.

And so I'm gonna take a little bit of time just to kind of uh get the highlights of uh the legislation that was passed that's going to impact your budget directly.

And um, and before I start, I also want to say that we were hopeful to uh have the uh 2026 assessed valuation certified uh for your material today, but unfortunately it has not been yet.

Um the legislation has delayed many counties from being able to get the August 1st deadline.

That's normally the deadline for certified assess valuations, uh, but unfortunately we don't have that data for you today.

So we'll be working with an assumption, and when we get the uh actual number, we'll report that back to the board.

Uh but um I'd start off by saying that was probably the most active legislative session.

I had seen in quite some time.

Um early in the session.

Um I met with the director of the county association, and his name's David Larff, and he and I were having a conversation of just how things were started, and I said to David, I said, you know, this feels like a train to me, and nothing seems to be slowing it down, and his comment back to me was interesting in that he said he's been doing this a long time as well.

He said, you know, this feels like the last weekend of the session, and it is the end of January, and so uh, and and there was internal fighting, it wasn't like uh uh politics as usual.

This there were there were a lot of internal battles going on, uh trying to figure out what they were going to do, and just to kind of hit those highlights.

Uh the governor uh came out early on in Senate Bill, the first version that came out, uh, had some pretty steep property tax cuts in it, and there was no replacement revenue that came along with that, and so uh that concerned a lot of people, uh including the Senate, and there were negotiations going on between the governor's office and the Senate.

Um, and ultimately then the Senate came out with a revised version that really wasn't going to cut property tax and go backwards, but it was going to limit all the future revenue going forward, in that we were not going to get any new revenue in property tax in year one, and then one percent in year two and three percent in year three.

So they were trying to control property tax by limiting future revenue so different model than what the governor had proposed, and again, in the Senate version, their version there was no replacement revenue and in that model, and the governor uh was not happy with that model either, and so then it eventually bounced over to the House and uh Representative Thompson, who's chair of House Ways and Means had his own version that he'd been working on for a while of what property tax reform should look like, and I will tell you it is a pretty complicated piece of legislation uh that that was in that uh language.

And Representative Thompson's chair of House Ways and Means had his own version that he'd been working on for a while of what property tax reform should look like.

And I will tell you, it is a pretty complicated piece of legislation that was in that language.

This is a credit of up to 10%, or excuse me, 10% or up to $300.

And that was new.

And then that was then included in Representative Thompson's bill, and ultimately, I believe what brought them together to pass the bill.

And it all happened pretty quickly.

Once that happened, it passed, it didn't go to committee.

Like I said, it felt like a train early on, and that's kind of how it went through.

They immediately passed it, the governor signed it, and then they began to do some revisions to it right away through through a DLGF bill, Department of Local Government Finance Bill started to fix some things that were not going to work.

And so if that kind of sums up the session, it was by far the most stressful set session for me because I had a lot of clients asking how this is going to impact me, now that's going to impact me.

But it was all moving so fast going back and forth, it was almost, and it was even hard to project even after it was passed.

All the nuances of the language.

So to give you some idea, that's taking away a large piece of the tax base, and means there'll be less ability to tax.

Then so you calculate the tax bill so that if it's this $300,000 home, their maximum tax cap is three thousand dollars with the circuit breaker, unless there's a referendum that goes beyond that.

But then that $300,000 house would then get a $300 credit.

So in some cases, we ended up now below the one percent circuit breaker in terms of what the liability is on homes.

So that was a big piece that was involved.

And they also implemented a new deduction for the properties that were in the two percent categories, and the two percent really means rental property and farm ground, those are the two categories that that were impacted.

Uh and that starts at six percent next year and will grow to 33 percent by 2031.

Again, another loss of assessed valuation on the tax base.

Farm ground was reduced.