Hall County Commissioners approve budget, property tax request

GRAND ISLAND – Hall County Commissioners approved the county’s 2026-27 budget and property tax request at a Sept. 23 meeting.

Commissioners voted 4-2 to approve each item, with Commissioners Gary Quandt and Karen Bredthauer voting against the motion. Commissioner Jane RIchardson was absent from the meeting.

Hall County’s total property tax request is $30,621,321, an increase of 5.31 percent. There is $1,464,620 in unused property tax request authority available for next year.

The budget includes these items:

*Operating budget: $134,899,823 (2025); $130,916,682 (2026), 2.95 percent decrease.

*Property tax request: $29,078,344 (2025), $30,621,321 (2026), 5.31 percent increase.

*Valuation: $8,099,201,130 (2025), $8,581,712,408 (2026), 5.96 percent increase.

*Tax rate: 0.313494 (2025), 0.356821 (2026), 13.82 percent increase.

The 2026-27 county levy is 0.397749 per $100 of valuation, which means the owner of a $100,000 house would pay $397.75. That compares to a 0.400034 tax levy in 2025-26, with the owner of a $100,000 house paying $400.03.

The meeting started with a request from Commissioner Karen Bredthauer, who serves as the Board’s liaison to the Stuhr Museum Board of Directors. Bredthauer said that the increase of minimum wage to $15 per hour has caused financial problems for the museum, because of the number of Museum employees who are paid minimum wage. She asked that Stuhr Museum receive up to an additional $20,000 this year, with the money to be taken from the Miscellaneous General Fund.

Board Chairman Ron Peterson wondered whether Commissioners should ask Stuhr Museum staff to come back at the end of the fiscal year for a request for more money, since it is unknown now what Stuhr Museum’s revenue will be for the 2026-27 fiscal year.

Stuhr Museum will receive $975,000 for 2026-27 from the county, the same as the two previous years. Commissioner Pam Lancaster that Stuhr Museum cannot request a property tax levy, so their funding comes from Hall County. 

“This would help them stay afloat for awhile,” Bredthauer said. “It would not make it whole.”

Commissioner Butch Hurst said, “All of a sudden this comes out of the blue. Where do you draw the line?” He said that other non-profit organizations are facing the same problem with the minimum wage increase. “When are we going to kill ourselves?”

“I think we have a greater responsibility there,” Lancaster said about funding Stuhr Museum.

Lancaster said at one time Stuhr Museum received $1.1 million from the county. 

Bredthauer made a motion to have Stuhr Museum receive up to an additional $20,000 this year. The motion passed 4-2, with Commissioners Butch Hurst and Scott Sorensen voting against it.

Tax-asking for 2026-27 for some Hall County entities are:

*Grand Island Rural Fire Department, $443,084, up from $412,311 last year.

*Agriculture Society, $156,101, up from $156,040 last year.

*Airport (General), $657,668, the same request as last year.

*Doniphan Fire Department, $142,977, 2025-26: $129,439.

*Cairo Fire Department, $76,355, 2025-26: $71,688.

*Wood River Fire Department, $70,776, 2025-26: $68,708.

*Shelton Fire Department, $40,407, 2025-26: $38,862.

The tax-asking for the Hall County Courthouse bond is $4,329,924. Hall County Commissioner Gary Quandt asked if that amount could be lowered to help provide some tax relief to taxpayers. He said he realized that the county was interested in paying that amount so that the bond could be paid off sooner. 

“People are hurting,” Quandt said. He said people are paying approximately $4.50 per gallon for gas for vehicles. 

“People can’t afford their houses,” he said. He noted that one landlord noted he had 38 renters move out in one month.

Hall County has to report the percentage of funding for public safety per parcel of land, which is 52.5 percent. All expenses related to public safety totaled $24,237,153. The general fund expenses from the budget plus public safety expenses outside the general fund that are funded by property tax are $46,181,564. Commissioners approved that funding for public safety by a 6-0 vote. 

Commissioner Pam Lancaster made some comments about how much time Commissioners have spent in budget preparation.

She estimated that the Board had spent approximately 20 hours working on the budget.

“It is the best we can do collectively. This is not about this year only,” she said. Commissioners also have to consider possible budgets for upcoming years. 

She referred to a “use it or lose it” decision by the Legislature.

The accumulation of unused property tax authority cannot exceed an aggregate of the prior year’s total authority. The Legislature adopted LB34 in August 2024, which created a “use it or lose it” scenario for local taxing entities. 

After the meeting Board Chairman Ron Peterson commented about the budget that was approved.

First, he talked about the “use it or lose it” decision by the Legislature.

“We used to have what was called unused authority which we could carry forward. We didn’t have to set any tax to do that. Now in order to have unused authority, you have to levy the tax this year for unused authority that you can carry forward to next year.”

“It’s meaning taxpayers have to pay money into the county for unused authority that we can have available for next year,” Peterson said.

“I think the budget was fair,” Peterson said about the budget that was adopted. “Obviously a budget is always a compromise. You have seven people trying to do what they think is proper. Everybody’s got their pet projects” that they are interested in, he said. “We try to be fair to everybody.”

He commented about the additional funding approved for Stuhr Museum.

“We know that Stuhr, like a lot of nonprofits, has been dramatically impacted by the minimum wage increase. Think about this: The minimum wage increase over the last five years has gone up from $9 an hour to $15 an hour. That’s a 60 percent increase in pay,” Peterson said.

He noted that people who only work summers at Stuhr Museum typically receive minimum wage. For instance, an employee may be assigned to be present in a house in Railroad Town and provide information about that house to people visiting the museum.

“That’s increased their costs dramatically. They’ve had to eliminate a number of jobs to be able to provide the services that they do,” Peterson said.

“Stuhr has been impacted as much as anybody,” Peterson said. “We provide a significant amount of Stuhr’s money, because the voters voted to have us support Stuhr Museum. We want to try to make sure that they can continue to operate.”