OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Johnson County recently released its 2025 budget. The county will adopt it in August, but before then, leaders wanted the community to understand the plan and provide input.
The county will host four community input sessions before publishing the budget.
Johnson County's budget director described it as a maintenance budget, meaning the revenues are starting to return to normal growth levels and the county is seeing an impact on spending from inflation.
Those two things have limited the amount of funding that’s available for any new items; the county is continuing to fund existing services but not adding anything new.
Johnson County budget director Robin Symes said the county is also seeing property values return to normal, helping residents' property taxes stabilize.
“We're seeing property values at about 6.5%, and so that's where residents can assume that that's the average for an average home which is about $480,000," Symes said. "At our quarter mill levy rollback, which we have proposed this year, really, residents would see about a $6 a month increase in those property taxes for an average home."
Symes also shared that inflation is impacting spending, creating the potential for budget problems within the next five years.
“We're seeing increases in our building costs, construction, public works, concrete, really all of those expenditures that we're seeing at home," she said. "Food, utilities, it's impacting our budget, and that's also causing a strain as far as any new services that we could provide."
The county won’t adopt the budget until late August, so to share your thoughts, you can visit one of the input sessions.
The first two are on Monday, June 3, at the Central Resource Library at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. The final two are on Monday, June 10, at the Monticello Library at the same times.
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