The Cherokee County Board of Supervisors froze all department budgets for the 2025 budget year, citing the reconstruction of F Avenue and recent state legislation that constrained the taxing authority of cities and counties.

The board directed all department heads to refigure their budgets to reflect funding levels the county collected in 2024. All county employees will still receive a 65-cent per hour raise under the terms of the vote. The county could afford the raises because its health insurance premiums didn’t rise — department heads were expecting a 10% increase.

Aside from the raises, the supervisors could afford little else.

Supervisor Cheryl Ellis said the department heads’ requests were $500,000 greater than what the current tax levies can generate. With the requests, plus other increasing expenses and projects scheduled for this year, the board would have to approach county taxpayers for an additional $1.2 million, she added.

Ellis ruled out the possibility of “asking the taxpayers for even more,” considering the supervisors’ court-ordered obligation of reconstructing F Avenue, which the county will have to raise “additional funds for,” she added. The supervisors opted against asking Cherokee County taxpayers for a general obligation bond to finance some of the county’s remaining obligations toward the $7.5 million project. Engineer Sarah Tracy asked for the supervisors to bond for at least $3 million toward the $7.5 million reconstruction and resurfacing project. The board decided to extract whatever it could from internal sources.

“The requests were half a million (dollars) over what we had last year,” Ellis said. “We don’t have those funds without going to the taxpayer for even more. So we’re going to request freezing out budgets back to last year’s numbers. We know that’s hard.”

GLIENKE ATTRIBUTED the decision to the county’s “limited taxing authority combined with additional expenses of the F Avenue project.”

The limited taxing authority stemmed from House File 718, which constrains cities’ and counties’ taxing authority when assessed valuations exceed 3%. Cherokee County’s urban valuations grew 9%; its rural valuations grew 7%. Glienke said the growth triggered mandatory reductions in its general fund and rural fund — the rural fund was the local financing source for the F Avenue reconstruction.

Glienke calculated the general fund levy shrinking by 3% and the rural fund levy shrinking 26% by next budget year.

“It’s a double-whammy between F Avenue and House File 718,” said Glienke, bemoaning the legislation that the Republican-dominated state legislature passed last session. The legislation was described by Gov. Kim Reynolds as a $100 million tax cut for property owners in Iowa. Glienke, an Aurelia Republican, complained that Cherokee was essentially punished for growing its tax base and pursuing an infrastructure project that’s expected to grow Little Sioux Corn Processors, one of the county’s top taxpayers.

The board declined to impose a bond, a direct tax on all properties in Cherokee, and instead opted to draw from the rural fund, which shrank because rural valuations grew, Glienke complained. She said the county raised its concerns with its state legislators, namely, Republican Rep. Zach Dieken of Granville. She claimed Dieken didn’t recognize that the legislation caused the county’s budget crunch. (She also claimed that Dieken failed to recognize that the county wasn’t responsible for improvements on state highways.)

“We got spanked and they dropped our rural levy by a whole dollar,” she said she told Dieken at a recent county farm bureau meeting. At the meeting area Republicans asked the state legislator about the Legislature’s intent behind the property tax law. And she claims area Republicans are becoming annoyed that he hasn’t come to Cherokee in the two years since he was elected. (Dieken won a Republican primary over Dennis Bush, a Cherokee resident and former county supervisor, because he supported Gov. Kim Reynolds’ school voucher program.)

“What are you people doing to us?” said Glienke of her barbs with Dieken. “You let this play out all that’s left to do is regionalize counties because we won’t have any taxing authority left.”

Dieken didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Glienke’s claims.

Glienke said the budget crunch will tighten next year. The county is expected to add $12.5 million in valuation as a result of newly built windmills in unincorporated Cherokee County. She believes the additional valuation will ratchet down the county’s rural taxing authority “by another buck,” or 34%.

“I don’t think the Legislature understood what they did here,” Glienke continued. “What they’re doing to all of us is that everyone who was taxing at (the statutory maximum counties can levy), everything dropped. We’re trying to grow our county. Those turbines are supposed to give us a little more money so that they can help us build bridges. Now it’s reducing our tax revenue. What the heck? Why do we want our county to grow if you’re gonna penalize us?”