ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Seward County’s budget will remain revenue neutral for the upcoming fiscal year.
That was the news after commissioners Monday voted unanimously to approve a budget to allow the county to collect exactly the amount of revenue it did in Fiscal Year 2026 under Kansas’s Revenue Neutral Rate law.
The mill levy voted on was 39.106 mills, down slightly from the FY 2026 rate of 41.211 and considerably down from the 43.414 mills in FY 2025.
The county’s Rural Fire District, which operates on a separate mill levy, saw a slight increase from FY 2026’s rate of 8.209 mills to 8.332 for FY 2027.
Assessed valuation for the county continued to rise. In FY 2025, the valuation totaled more than $265 million. That number rose to nearly $284 million in FY 2026, and for FY 2027, the number again increased to more than $294 million.
Net expenditures for the county appear to be fluctuating. FY 2025 had a total of just more than $38 million, with FY 2026’s numbers at more than $31 million and FY 2027’s expected net expenditures estimated at nearly $36 million.
The bulk of the 39 plus mills in this year’s budget comes from the general fund, which came in with a mill levy of 34.366 mills.
Prior to that vote, though, commissioners also voted unanimously to turn down a resolution which would allow the county to exceed the RNR for FY 2027.
Administrator April Warden said any motion made would call to approve the resolution, but through a roll call, commissioners would then vote no to disapprove the resolution.
“Because on July 20, we notified the county clerk there was a possibility we would be exceeding the Revenue Neutral Rate,” she said. “They recommended we still do a resolution. Seeing you are remaining revenue neutral, you would not approve the resolution, but you will take a roll call vote as to whether or not you’re approving it.”
Warden emphasized though there was no resolution, the results of the roll call vote would still need to be sent to the state.
“Typically, if you remain revenue neutral, there wouldn’t be a need to hold a hearing and go through all that, but after talking to the state and with the climate we’re in right now, they suggested we go through with this process so there’s no question,” she said.
Though eventually he joined his fellow commissioners in voting for the FY 2027 RNR budget, Vice Chairman Todd Stanton questioned where changes could be found in the proposed budget.
“This is the budget we had worked on previously, but I don’t see anything that shows me what the changes are,” he said.
Warden said budgets were given to commissioners prior to Monday’s meeting and had been published 10 days prior to Monday’s public hearing in the Leader & Times, and she did let commissioners know it was being reduced to revenue neutral.
“It was all coming from the general fund, so the suggestion was asked did you want to go back and look at each individual budget, or did you want to take it from your cash carryover knowing you were leaving $800,000 in your reserve for claims as well,” she said. “It was my understanding you guys did not want to meet again, and that was understood.”
Stanton asked Warden if these reductions were made.
“You asked several questions after that to make sure you understood, and I thought I answered those,” Warden said. “The only change was made to your cash carryover.”
“Everything else was put in place in terms of salary structure,” Stanton said.
“Correct and you guys were going to look at that at the first year,” Warden said.
Monday’s vote came a little more than a year after former commissioners Scott Carr, Tammy Sutherland-Abbott and Presephoni Fuller voted to have the FY 2026 mill levy exceed RNR by more than 15 mills.
In 2024, after a motion failed for lack of a second to raise the mill levy by 8 mills, by law, the county’s mill levy was placed at the RNR rate for FY 2025.
