Park County delays setting mill levies after valuation, TIF and library accounting questions

Park County commissioners on Sept. 10 said they would not set final mill-levy rates until staff resolve discrepancies in taxable valuation and the classification of several voted mills.

Mary Anne, a county staff member responsible for valuation analysis, told commissioners that removing tax-increment (TIF) districts from the valuation sheets lowered the county's taxable valuation from $111,000,000 to $108,000,000, a change that reduces the per-mill value and affects carryforward mills and revenue projections. "When you take the TIF districts out...it takes our taxable...our mill value down to a 108,000 as opposed to a 111,000," she said. Staff warned the change translated to roughly a $3,000-per-mill difference in the numbers they had been using.

The discussion also highlighted uncertainty over library mills. Mary Anne and other staff said records through 1998 show a 2.5-mill amount tied to library funding but it is unclear whether that 2.5 was a voted mill or an internal allocation. Commissioners instructed staff to search archival election records and council minutes — including records predating digitization — to determine whether the library mill can be removed from the countywide aggregate without reducing mills available for other services. "I found it most easy to go through the books page by page," Mary Anne said of the records search.

Officials said they will not publish mill-levy notices or launch the required public-advertising step until Nancy Everson and other valuation reviewers confirm the correct district boundaries, conversions and whether some levies were reset by recent legislation. A staff member reminded the board that once an advertisement runs the budget and supporting documents must be available online, so the commission prefers to get the conversion math and historical classification right before moving forward.