As Pink Post Card Hearings go, Seward County and Milford taxpayers were to the point and conversational, wrapping the event up within about 45 minutes on Sept. 22.
Milford Mayor Patrick Kelly and Seward County Board of Commissioners Chair Misty Ahmic presented budget information and invited questions about their 2025-2026 budgets, as required by the “pink postcard hearing” legislation targeting the cities, counties and school districts that exceed the state-mandated budget growth limit of 2% of their previous property tax request plus their percentage of growth in new valuation.
For Seward County that required a hearing once the property tax requested exceeded the 2024-2025 asking by 3.1%. For Milford, the 2% was combined with a 6% increase in valuation.
A few attendees’ questions dealt with property valuations that are regulated by state statutes and carried out by the county assessor.
Milford catching up with improvements
Kelly told the approximately 40 people at the hearing – which included all five Seward County commissioners, and District 24 Sen. Jana Hughes – that for 20-plus years Milford held the levy steady, but for the last several years, the community has been making significant investments and some of those require property tax support.
One fairly new Milford resident pointed to the last three years in which Milford’s property taxes have increased, noting his own taxes increased about 30%.
Kelly acknowledged the recent trend.
“We have had to do a lot of improvement to get it to what you see today,” he said of Milford.
The City of Milford’s 2025-2026 proposed tax revenues have been set at $842,744, which is 8% higher than the 2024-2025 tax asking of $777,074. The city’s valuation increased from $161,920,085 to $170,924,535 based on information provided by the city.
The city’s total operating budget – including property tax revenue, state funding and other income – will be $10,390,330, up 25% from last year’s $8,329,720.
With this year’s tax asking, he said a $200,000 assessed property, will see a $26 increase in city property taxes.
“We have dipped in the reserves the past few years to do some projects,” Kelly said, noting the city now needs to protect and increase its reserves.
“This year we had to make the decision that we are going to balance it out.”
Kelly said he did not see annual increases recurring at the same rate because the city is catching up and growing.
One action that will help, he said, is the Milford Volunteer Fire Department’s decision to move toward billing people for whom they provide ambulance service if insurance is available. Kelly noted the volunteers often assist people outside the city limits, including accidents and incidents on Interstate 80.
In addition to the city’s funding, the department receives about $40,000 annually from the Seward County Rural Fire District and a larger allotment for equipment or other improvements every seven years with a rotation among the district’s other members.
The city’s budget also includes funding to extend the city’s water main replacement projects to improve water quality involving state revolving fund financing, address needs of the senior center and recreation department, and meet increasing insurance costs and other expenses related to the city’s eight employees and other operations.
This or next year the city will begin plans to deal with the 100-year-old brick 1st Street that the mayor said can be “unbearable” to drive on and might include some bond funding
Kelly cited several city achievements in recent years, including a new $1.6 million city hall constructed in the last five or six years with only $600,000 financed by bonds, a new park with a splash pad that was financed with $1 million in private gifts and foundation grants, and an upcoming Christmas tree lighting project to be funded with keno funds.
“We want to make it a place we all want to come home to,” Kelly said. “We do get a lot of support for everything we have been doing the past few years,”
County cites one-time sheriff’s expenses
Ahmic told the hearing audience that the county board took extra care in its work with department heads this year to hold the budget and perhaps decrease the county’s levy.
While they were able to lower the levy by one cent, she said the county’s budget increase brought her to the Pink Postcard Hearing as their tax increase grew 5.82% ($601,054) to $10,923,481 this year, requiring a levy of 26.1794 cents per $100 tax valuation.
Property valued at $100,000 last year was taxed about $272.73.
Seward County’s valuation rose from $3,784,863,148 in 2024-2025 to $4,172,554,801 in 2025-2026, an increase of more than $387.6 million.
The county’s proposed $10,923,481 tax request includes general fund expenditures for all county departments and $675,000 for debt service on the bond issue for construction of the Justice Center.
Ahmic said budget changes include across-the-board raises for employees and the addition of merit increases to improve recruitment and retention of employees.
Due to “an interpretation error on the part of the Sheriff’s Department” related to U.S. Department of Treasury reimbursement of Seward County Drug Interdiction Task Force work, Ahmic said the county board added $400,000 to the sheriff’s office’s property tax-supported budget.
“We do think those costs will be reduced next year,” she said, noting that the misinterpretation led to the department losing its certification and being designated a “no spending” department with the U.S. Department of Treasury until the matter is cleared up.
Other questions raised at the meeting centered on other agencies paying the county for the cost of housing out-of-county inmates at the Seward County Detention Center and a significant increase in the public defender’s budget, which Ahmic said was not a budget increase, but reflected the placement of court-appointed attorney costs in the public defender budget instead of the general fund allocations.
The Seward County Commissioners gave final approval to their budget at their Sept. 22 meeting. The Milford City Council met Sept. 24 and approved the city’s budget.
When all political subdivisions have submitted their tax requests, the Seward County assessor totals all taxable property valuations by the appropriate taxing entity to determine each property owner’s tax responsibility. The actual tax rate per property depends upon which city, village, school district, natural resources district, or other taxing entities include their property.
