The Greene County supervisors received information at their Jan. 30 meeting of how the lower property valuation of Wild Rose Casino will affect budgeting for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2025.
County attorney Thomas Laehn at the Jan. 27 meeting had reported on a settlement between Wild Rose Casino owners and the county regarding the assessment of the casino building. The settlement avoided a hearing before the state Property Assessment Appeal Board. The casino had been assessed at $20,751,000 for FY 23, and $23,436,800 for FY 24. The settlement reduced the assessment to $18,144,000 for both years.
Pam Olerich, real estate coordinator in the county auditor’s office, updated information she had provided to the supervisors Jan. 2 about increases in total taxable valuation. That information was based on the county assessor’s valuation of Wild Rose, not the settlement.
The updated figures show the total urban valuation of the county up 1.38 percent over the previous year; the original figure was 3.6 percent. The total valuation for the city of Jefferson is now decreased .41 percent from last year; the earlier figure showed an increase of 2.68 percent.
Olerich said the decrease equates to close to a $93,000 decrease in revenue for the current budget year, with the decrease spread among the county, the city of Jefferson, Greene County Schools, Greene County Medical Center, Greene County Extension, and the county assessor.
The budgets for those entities will all be short some of the expected revenue in the current year.
Olerich’s conversation with the supervisors was not included in the auditor’s minutes of the meeting.
In other business, department budget requests were presented by the ambulance, public health, and auditor/elections. Discussion of the ambulance budget included talk of eventually building a new ambulance facility that would include sleeping quarters for ambulance staff. That project would be years into the future.
