It’s back to the drawing board for the Carbon County 2022 budget.

On Thursday, the board, in a 2-1 vote, rejected the final version of next year’s spending plan, which calls for a half-mill tax increase. Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein cast the only yes vote.

There was much discussion regarding the $87,296,458 budget plan.

Commissioner Rocky Ahner, who voted against the proposed operating funds budget in November, again said he wasn’t happy with the figures as they stood.

“It seems like a lot of issues that we have in here and I think the more I look at it, I’m still not settled,” Ahner said. “A budget is a spending plan on where money should be spent.

“In this year’s budget (2021) there were proposed purchases that were never spent, such as vehicle purchases, department positions that were never hired and other miscellaneous expenditures, yet we’re rolling money over to the fund balance. I would say the taxpayer would rather have the money in their bank account instead of ours.”

Ahner cited a lot of different factors - including the courthouse renovation, COVID-19 related money that the county received, and employee salaries, which he believes are too low - that are not fully addressed in the budget.

“It’s time to treat the employees with respect and give the taxpayers what they paid for,” Ahner said.

Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said the county should have reopened the 2020 budget when he made a motion at the first meeting, but it died for lack of a second.

He cited several instances where he felt led to the position the county is in today, including that the county is giving across the board pay increases instead of looking at other raise models; not reopening negotiations with Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau on the hotel tax remittance that the county receives; and allowing redundancies in positions in some departments that cost the county.

“We are where we are because of the failure to act previously and in a preventative manner,” Lukasevich said.

Nothstein disagreed with some of his colleagues’ thoughts.

He said that there are a lot of issues, including solving spacing and staffing issues for Children and Youth Services; and future spacing needs at the prison that need to be addressed, as well as a 14.1% increase for health care costs; rising pension costs and skyrocketing fuel prices.

With regards to salaries, Nothstein said that the county is having trouble keeping people because of the current lower pay scales, which he said “were not conducive of a good hiring process.”

“We have a lot of great employees in this county, great employees who are well deserving of a lot better pay scale than they’re getting now,” he said, adding that he hopes the pay scale study the county contracted will help resolve these issues over the next year. “It (the pay scale) is a mess.”

Nothstein also pointed out that even with a half-mill tax increase, the county would be taking $1.4 million out of the operating fund to balance the budget.

“If we want to fix things, it’s going to take people to fix it and it’s going to be an expense,” Nothstein said. “… To me the half-mill increase is definitely justified because we can’t keep taking money out of that operating fund and the fund balance. The costs are not going to go down. And I fear, that if we keep taking that down and don’t make some movement now, it’s going to come back and haunt us in the future.”

The board now has until Dec. 30 to rework the final budget. By law, a budget must be passed by the end of the year.

The new final budget figures will now be presented at the commissioners’ final meeting of the year at 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 30.