Alpena County staff will craft two proposed budgets for 2025, News staff writer Steve Schulwitz reported Wednesday.

One budget will assume about $800,000 in revenue from a property tax increase the county will ask voters to approve in November.

The other budget will not include that amount and will instead assume a 10% cut from each county department, a figure county officials likely can only reach by laying off staff and trimming county services.

The goal of the dual budgets is to paint a clear picture for voters of the consequences of a no vote on the proposed tax increase.

The board expects staff to have those dual budgets available by September, in plenty of time for voters to review them before the Nov. 5 election.

Voters need all the information they can get before deciding on the property tax proposal. They need to know what would happen if the proposed tax passes and what would happen if it fails.

The background:

The county’s current budget assumes a $1.8 million gap between the revenue the county will bring in and the expenses it will pay out. County Treasurer Kim Ludlow told county commissioners Tuesday she thinks the county can trim that gap by as much as $800,000 by year’s end with smart spending and other steps.

The county has to cover that gap by dipping into its cash savings. Assuming the county can take $800,000 off its deficit by New Year’s Eve, that would leave about $1.5 million in the bank to start 2025.

That means the county can’t afford many more years of deficits without running out of savings to cover them.

State law requires the county to pass balanced budgets, meaning that, once the savings is drained, it has to make cuts to balance the books. Continued deficit budgets risk state takeover.

To help cover the shortfall, county commissioners on Tuesday agreed to ask voters in November to approve a 0.7-mill property tax hike that would cost the owner of a $100,000 house about $35 a year and bring in about $800,000 in additional annual revenue.

The proposal essentially asks voters to override what’s known as a “Headlee rollback,” a provision in the state constitution that automatically reduces local governments’ tax rates in certain circumstances. The county is calling its proposal a “Headlee roll-up.”

If the county can get the Headlee roll-up approved, it might be able to avoid digging into savings at all.

If it can’t, the county could start 2025 by laying off staff.

We urge Alpena County voters to study the two county budgets carefully and consider what they want their county government to look like.

And then vote accordingly.