Summer officially began early Friday morning which, as it happens, also means county and municipal officials throughout Indiana are breaking out the pencil sharpeners to begin writing budgets for 2014.
Madison County is no exception.
Seems early, you might think, but it's not. Really.
Next week, local governments will receive the first of two property tax draws for the year, which will be used as the baseline from which to project revenue for 2014.
Local governments collect an alphabet soup of taxes — the County Option Income Tax, (COIT), Local Option Income Tax, (LOIT), County Economic Development Income Tax, (CEDIT), sales tax and more — but the single largest source of revenue used to finance local government operations is still property taxes.
Anderson Mayor Kevin Smith said last week that many of the issues the city confronted when cobbling together this year's budget last fall, such as police and fire department layoffs, will remain land mines as officials begin looking ahead to 2014.
City Controller Sam Pelligreno said he won't know until next week exactly how much property tax revenue the city will receive in this draw and didn't want to make predictions on Friday.
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