San Juan County Council weighs new revenue options amid $4 million budget gap

Published 1:30 am Friday, July 17, 2026

The San Juan County Council spent much of its July 14 meeting wrestling with a stark fiscal reality: a $4 million deficit looming over the 2027 budget, and only a handful of new revenue tools to help close it.

Deputy County Manager Tillery Williams laid out the situation bluntly. “It is widely known that the county is facing a significant financial challenge for 2027,” he told the Council, adding that after a failed April levy lift and a series of June budget hearings, the County had identified “roughly $3.7 million in potential reductions” across nearly every department.

Williams then walked the Council through three new revenue options recently made available to counties through state legislation. The first, a one-tenth of 1% sales and use tax dedicated to law enforcement programs, could generate “approximately $800,000” for criminal justice purposes, he said. That option is tied to a pending state grant for two Sheriff’s Office positions — patrol staff, vehicles, training and uniforms — funded by the state for roughly three years. Williams said the sales tax would let the County keep those positions staffed once the grant funding runs out.

The second option, a five-cent property tax levy for public health clinics, could bring in about $740,000 a year. Mark Tompkins, director of Health & Community Services, told the Council the funds would support “nursing staff that would perform such services as immunizations, pregnancy tests and the like,” along with community health worker positions currently at risk under proposed cuts.

The third option proved most contentious: separating the veterans assistance and mental health/developmental disabilities levies from current expenses into their own dedicated levies. Williams warned that a legislative change appeared to strip away exemptions that had let the County underfund the mental health levy. “We now have an obligation that we did not have previous to the dissecting of this bill,” said Council Chair Justin Paulsen, estimating the change could add roughly $320,000 in new, unavoidable costs. He also noted the legislation would let the Council enact, without a public vote, a veterans levy as high as 27 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, calling it “a crazy number that we could do.” “I am baffled that that number cleared the legislature,” Paulsen said.

Council member Kari McVeigh pushed back on the piecemeal proposals. “These are all very band-aid-ish, for sure,” she said, arguing that state lawmakers keep handing counties “little tiny authority” instead of tools to address budget needs holistically. “It doesn’t give the county the ability to look at the whole needs of a county,” she said.

Council member Jane Fuller pressed Williams for clarity on timing and messaging, noting confusion extends beyond the chambers into the community. “I’ve been asked the same question, and I equally do not have an answer,” she said, referring to constituent questions about a possible November levy request. She called the unresolved question “a bit of the proverbial elephant that’s in the council chambers.”

Ultimately, the Council reached an informal consensus that a broader, cohesive conversation about a countywide levy must happen before deciding on these smaller options. “If we can come up with a good cohesive levy discussion that we all believe might be successful … we can incorporate some of these thoughts into that levy discussion,” Paulsen said, suggesting the smaller measures could later fold into a single, comprehensive, voter-approved solution.

No formal votes were taken on the three options. Council directed staff to keep researching the legal and fiscal implications of each ahead of further budget talks this fall.