A $4 million loan that Carbon County was forced to take out as a result of lagging state reimbursements has been repaid, officials said.

On Thursday, Commissioner Chris Lukasevich announced that the loan, which was taken out of the capital projects funds in March, has officially been repaid in full, with interest.

He said that the interest amounted to the county increasing the capital projects funds by $35,417.

The county acted as its own bank for the loan, which helped cover county operations while waiting on $3.4 million in reimbursements from the state for the county Children and Youth Services department. The state covers 80% of Children and Youth’s budget, but had an outstanding balance at the beginning of the year.

The commissioners verged into a discussion about last year’s decision to not include a 0.25-mill increase in the budget.

“I want to reemphasize the potential way of mitigating that type of necessity from time to time was suggested a quarter-mill tax increase,” Lukasevich said, noting that a quarter-mill equates to $397,000. “That tax increases in perpetuity. Once you enact it, or at the least what we’ve seen is far and few between do tax increases get repealed.”

He said that he continues to feel that this short-term loan was “very positive” compared to a tax increase that Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein proposed.

Nothstein responded that the minimal tax increase he proposed would have helped offset a larger tax increase that could be looming because his colleagues chose to take millions out of the general fund to balance the budget.

“The problem is most likely this is going to happen again,” he said. “ ... I just fear that we’re going to be hit hard, very hard come January in the new budget with all the increased expenses and salaries and everything else going on with that and not keeping up with and looking at the future.”

Carbon County has kicked off the 2024 budget process a month early after the commissioners approved preparing the budget ahead of the general election. All three commissioners seats are up for election this November.

Controller Mark Sverchek said that departments will receive requests on their 2024 budgets by the end of the month, with a return for requests in August.

The target date to have the proposed budget completed is in October.