Park County commissioners approved the budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year on Tuesday morning, authorizing up to $37.6 million in expenditures. Despite receiving roughly $2.2 million less in property taxes, commissioners were able to include a more than 3% average raise for employees and absorb a $170,000 hike in employee insurance costs.

To make up the loss of property tax dollars, the county slashed most special funding requests by at least 25% — some organizations were cut entirely while the county’s three senior centers were spared — and accepted trimmed down budgets from many of the departments. For instance, the large road and bridge budget is set to total around $7.3 million this year, down $2.1 million from the previous budget.

Commissioner Scott Mangold said he appreciated the staff understanding the situation the county is in.

“Each one of our department heads came in with ideas of how to cut the budget,” he said. “We’re in a situation here where this is just the first: We’re going to have to do this again next year, and it’s going to be a lot more painful.”

Mangold said the county has lost employees to cities, other government entities and the private sector, which are able to offer better pay than the county can. The raises are meant to address that.

“I think the key is, if we can somehow keep our staff, we’re going to continue to be successful,” Mangold said. “We have been successful because of the staff we have. We’re going to be hitting some rough waters with less money coming in and hopefully our staff can get us through it.”

The unanimous vote to approve the budget came after a Monday night public hearing. Out of the half dozen or so members of the public who were present, only two people spoke.

Cody resident Heidi Rasmussen said there needed to be more education on the effect of property tax reduction. 

“When we see, ‘I want to pay lower tax or decrease my property tax on the ballot,’ it looks like a great idea, until you come to these budget meetings, both here and through the City of Cody … and we see services being cut,” said Rasmussen, a former Cody council member. She added that the county and cities have better services than many places.

“If we continue to reduce revenue coming to our local governments, some of those services are going to have to get cut in the nature of balancing the budget,” Rasmussen said.

One of the general themes through the process was an acknowledgment that, while the county can withstand a drop in revenue this year, another similar or greater drop in revenue would be devastating. Voters are set to consider a constitutional amendment in 2026 that would cut residential property taxes by 50%.

Commission Chair Dossie Overfield said they didn’t want to make the cuts they made, including to eliminate funding for local economic development organizations and cutting their own Park County Parks and Recreation Board’s funding by 25%. However, Overfield said the commissioners had to prioritize to ensure required county functions continue — which includes holding onto the employees performing those services. 

County Engineer Brian Edwards was one of the biggest proponents of the pay increase, as he’s recently lost multiple experienced staffers to higher wages elsewhere. Edwards also expressed concern about what continual cutting could do to the better than average state of the county roads, as there is a long line of projects to accomplish and annual repairs to make.

“Obviously, there are no shortage of needs when it comes to road and bridge related capital improvements,” he told the Tribune. “Right now, we have 14 bridges throughout the county that are rated for major rehabilitation or replacement. In addition, with more than 630 miles of road to maintain (roughly half of this is paved road), there are many miles of road in need of major rehabilitation.”

These projects can be funded by the separate County Road Construction and Maintenance Fund, which grows by only roughly $1 million in taxes per year.