News Detail
Lower Republican NRD mulls budget
8/18/2008 8:52:16 AM
By GINGER JENSEN
Hub Regional Correspondent
ALMA - The Lower Republican Natural Resources District directors set a public hearing for a fiscal year 2008-09 budget that includes about $40,000 more in expenditures but $604,987 less in property tax asking.
The hearing will start at 7 p.m. Sept. 11 at the NRD office in Alma.
The district's total proposed budget is $4,378,142, compared with $4,338,003 in the past fiscal year. However, the past budget included $1,365,087 in property taxes, while the new one seeks $760,100.
LRNRD General Manager Mike Clements explained the difference at Thursday's board meeting. He said no property taxes are being sought for a special levy this year.
The FY2008 budget included a special property tax levy of 4.82 cents per $100 valuation and $5.20-per-irrigated-acre occupation tax to collect money owed for water purchased in 2007 from upstream surface water irrigators.
Clements said that, to date, $343,049 of the special property tax has been collected and $868,697 of the occupation tax has been collected. There are $997,995 in uncollected occupation taxes.
Those funds are being held in escrow pending resolution of a legal challenge to the property tax.
A lawsuit filed by the Friends of the River organization last fall says the tax authorized by LB701 that applies only to the Upper, Middle and Lower Republican NRDs is an unconstitutional use of a local property tax for a state function. The money was earmarked to pay for surface water that augmented river flows to Kansas for Republican River Compact compliance.
The plaintiffs say compact compliance is a state responsibility. The case is in the hands of the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the Nebraska Legislature approved legislation and an appropriation earlier this year to pay the NRDs' 2007 water debt to irrigators upstream of Harlan County Lake, with the understanding that the NRDs will reimburse the state once the lawsuit is decided.
The largest line item in the proposed FY2009 LRNRD budget, at $2,223,260, reflects the pass-through state money loaned to the three NRDs.
The largest budget increase is for LRNRD participation in the Republican River Basin Coalition, an organization formed by the three NRDs to serve as the conduit for the surface water purchase. It also works on other Republican River projects, including an augmentation program.
Clements said of the $148,000 in the FY2009 budget earmarked for the coalition, $116,000 is the LRNRD's contribution to the augmentation project. A feasibility study is being conducted on a pipeline project that would put groundwater directly into the Republican River near the Nebraska-Kansas state line.
Coordinator Traci Witthuhn said the coalition has a $514,500 grant from the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources to complete the augmentation project study and move it into the engineering and infrastructure phase.
The coalition's total match is $443,800, with the cost split based on each NRD's percent of streamflow depletion: Lower Republican, 26; Middle Republican, 30; and Upper Republican, 44. They equally share coalition overhead expenses.
The LRNRD directors also will set the new tax levy at the Sept. 11 board meeting. Clements said it can't be computed until new property valuations are received from assessors in the district's five counties.
The 2007-08 levy was 4.76 cents per $100 valuation, not including the special property tax.
In other business Thursday, Marlin Murdock of Oxford was sworn in as a director. He replaces Toby tenBensel of Arapahoe, who resigned after moving out of his subdistrict.
