PEORIA, Ill. — Peoria County has a new budget.
The Peoria County board unanimously passed the 2020 budget Wednesday at it’s last meeting of the year.
County Administrator Steve Sorrel says the $133 million dollar budget covers employee pensions without raising property taxes. Sorrel adds there was a lot of uncertainty on sources of revenue, including sales taxes from the sale of marijuana.
“We’ve got $50,000 budgeting in revenue related to cannabis. Obviously we don’t have a good handle yet on whether that is going to be a good number or if it is going to be more than that. We wanted to be conservative on our estimates” said Sorrel.
Sorrel added there are challenges. The budget proposal stated while the United States continues to see strong economic growth, Illinois and Peoria County especially continue to struggle. With a change in administrations in Springfield, county administrators are optimistic Illinois is on the road to improvement. Locally however, the struggle continues.
September’s Unemployment Rate for the United States was 3.3%, for Illinois it was 3.6%, and for Peoria County it was 4.7%. The local unemployment rate is drastically better than it was a decade ago, but the lag in job growth and persons employed in the community places a strain on consumer spending.
The report also notes that property values in Peoria County continue to erode. The loss of property values from 2019 to 2020 is estimated to be 1.75%.
