BUDGETS
The Iowa Great Lakes Sanitary District has two budgets the tax levy budget and the operational budget. The tax levy budget is required to be certified to the County Auditor by March 1st of each year. The operations budget is generally approved on the fourth Tuesday of June.
TAX LEVY BUDGET
The tax levy budget has to part the operations and the debt service. The tax levy budget is set up by Iowa Code Section 358 and set specific requirements limitations on Sanitary Districts. The operations is allowed on $0.54 per $1,000 of evaluation on a property within the Sanitary District. If a property is worth $100,000 the the amount paid to the Sanitary District for operations is $54.00. The operations pays for property insurance, Trustee Fees, Safety Training, Legal Expenses, Office Expenses, and part of Wages, FICA, IPERS, and Health Insurance.
The debt service of the tax levy budget pays for construction projects and engineering. The Trustees have set this levy not to exceed $1.96 per $1,000 of evaluation on a property within the Sanitary District. If a property is worth $100,000, the amount paid to the Sanitary District for debt service is $196.00.
The tax levy for the Sanitary District over the last 30 years has been within a penny of $2.50 per $1,000 of evaluation on a property within the Sanitary District. That places the cost for a $100,000 property within the Sanitary District at $250.00.
OPERATIONS BUDGET
The operations budget can not be set until after the tax levy budget is certified to the County Auditor. This budget is used to determine how funds will be spent on the operations of the Sanitary District. The funds for this budget comes from two sources. The first is the tax levy for operations as listed above. The second is from the user fees on the sewer system. Those two funds totaled together make up the operations budget. This budget takes in to account expenses for all the day to day operations, maintenance and in limited cases, emergencies. The operations budget is generally approved on the fourth Tuesday in June.