Clay County Commission

Dan Haglund 

The director of Social Services of Clay County presented her 2024 budget, which includes a 1.23% budget hike, before the Clay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday in Moorhead.

Rhonda Porter first gave the 2022 budget numbers as a baseline for the 2024 proposal, which includes a nearly half-million-dollar bump for detox. 

“You know the Social Services budget is $25 million,” Porter said. “And there’s a lot of things that pass through the budget that don’t necessarily impact the levy, or the year-end revenues over expenditures. So I’m really focusing on those programs and services that impact the levy request or the bottom line.”

“As you know, sometimes mid-year we may get a grant, and that grant may have a corresponding expenditure,” Porter said. 

Porter first went through the 2022 budget year, and explained why her department ended up with $1.4 million in revenues over expenses.

The first portion came from salaries/benefits, as there was $292,923 less than budgeted. There were four retirements and 11 staff changes that year, accounting for the difference.

Next, Porter said the administrative part of the budget was $74,485 over budget. 

In program areas, Porter said $2.5 million was the net budget for out-of-home placements in 2022, but spent $24,817 under budget. 

In purchase service costs, mainly fee-for-services and services not necessarily attached to grants, Porter said Social Services came in $473,000 under budget. 

“Looking back over 2020-22, we still had influences of the pandemic in our program areas,” Porter said. “Utilization, staff shortages do impact those program areas, and they did in 2022 as well.”

The programs budget was reduced $228,266 from 2022 to 2023, and moving into the 2024 budget Porter proposes reducing it again by $114,500.

Porter says there were also increased revenues of $335,331 in 2022. Porter says the 2024 budget will reflect this increased revenue trend.

“Because it was during those pandemic years, was there money that you’re taking as revenues that don’t exist anymore?” asked Commissioner Paul Krabbenhoft, Dist. 1.

“In small amounts, yes,” Porter said. “However if you look at increased revenues for our billable services, particularly for Medicaid, we did over the pandemic years get increased revenue from that. We got some increased federal participation that increased our revenues. And that will not be going forward.”

Looking forward to 2024, Porter stated that the current year’s levy request was $13,038,023. The board decided to use $350,000 of it, which then set the county levy at $12,688,023 for Social Services. Porter said she used her 2023 request as a starting off point for the 2024 request, not including the board’s previous reduction.

She is requesting a levy of $13,198,935, which is $160,912 more, representing a 1.23% increase from last year. 

A significant increased portion of the budget comes in the area of detox, Porter said.

“So right now, we budget a little over $700,000 for detox,” Porter said. “However, with the expansion and the new facility (15th Avenue North building currently under construction) we’ve added $445,875 to that budget.”