Scott Township used a little more than $2 million in money left over from this year’s budget to make up for an expected drop in revenue in 2021.

Supervisors voted unanimously Dec. 8 to approve a more than $12.6 million spending plan with no tax increase. The budget is about $500,000 less than this year.

The unchanged tax rate, which is 5.1711 mills, means the owner of a property assessed at $150,000 will continue to pay $776 a year to help finance township services.

“Our biggest issue when developing next year’s budget were the unknowns,” said manager Denise Fitzgerald. “Normally we have 20 years’ worth of data to analyze to see where the growth (in revenue) has occurred. But with the pandemic, we couldn’t rely on that information this year because we had no idea where the financial hits would be coming from.”

Revenue from the property tax, which is the township’s largest source of income, is estimated at about $4.871 million for 2021, which is about the same collected this year.

Fitzgerald said her initial projections for revenue from the earned income and mercantile taxes “were much lower,” but were revised upwards during the year.

“It was a pleasant surprise,” she said.

The 1% earned income tax is expected to generate about $2.5 million, which is $95,000 less than this year’s budget. Income from the mercantile tax will be about $238,000, which is only $2,000 less than this year’s budget.

Money generated by the emergency services tax, which was budgeted at $270,000 for this year, is likely to drop by about $10,000 in 2021. Income from the cable TV franchise fee, which was budgeted at $340,000 this year, also is expected to drop by about $10,000.

The township also expected to get about $40,000 less from the county’s Regional Asset District sales tax, which is expected to dip to about $502,000 next year.

Income from the township’s recreation programs, which includes fees paid for swimming pool passes, fell sharply this year because of the statewide coronavirus shutdown.

Revenue from those sources was budgeted at about $250,000 this year — but only about $90,000 was collected.

The township received about $240,000 in state grants for recycling and parks and recreation projects and $175,000 for operating expenses this year but budgeted nothing from those sources for 2021.

“We don’t put money in the budget from grants because we don’t know for certain if we’ll receive them,” Fitzgerald said.

Next year’s budget sets spending for all departments at about the same or slightly higher or lower than the amount budgeted this year.

If next year’s revenue falls below the estimates made in the budget, the township would likely delay spending on capital projects such as non-mandated sanitary and storm sewer upgrades.

One area the township will save money next year is road paving. The $850,000 typically spent to resurface roads will be trimmed to about $700,000 in 2021 to help balance the budget.

Fitzgerald noted that a delayed project could be put back on track if the revenue becomes available.

“We delayed some projects this year because of the uncertainty, but they have now been approved and we’ll move forward with them,” she said. “We’ll take the same approach next year.”

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