HERMANN — Buoyed by another record year of sales tax revenue, Gasconade County officials will start the detailed process of putting together an operating budget for 2026 with a public hearing Monday morning.

The bulk of the work on a proposed budget, which will be crafted by the County Clerk’s Office, will begin in earnest the first week of January after the various county government officeholders return their funding requests. They now have the forms and are putting together the revenue figures they think they will need in the coming year.

County Clerk Lesa Lietzow is county government’s chief budget officer. She and her staff will be taking the departmental requests and working them into the spending blueprint that matches projected expenditures with the estimated available revenues.

If necessary, the County Commission will meet with individual officeholders to discuss their funding requests. The administrative panel later in January will begin considering the numbers contained in Lietzow’s proposed operating budget. As a 3rd-Class county, the Commission has until the end of January to adopt a budget for 2026.

Meanwhile, during Monday’s special session, being held in light of New Year’s Day being on Thursday, the normal Commission meeting day, county administrators are scheduled to talk with State Sen. Ben Brown, R-Washington. Likely to be a topic is Senate Bill 3, legislation that was signed into law aimed at providing property tax relief for homeowners. However, the law does not contain a way to compensate for the loss by local government agencies of property tax revenue — especially schools. While Gasconade County might lose relatively little — because of its very low property tax — other political subdivisions, especially local school districts, the library district and Hermann Area District Hospital, stand to lose many dollars through Senate Bill 3.

Brown voted against the bill when it made its way to the Senate, unlike State Rep. Bruce Sassmann, R-Bland, who voted for the legislation. Sassmann last week told the Commission he voted for the measure not necessarily because he supported it but because the Republican Caucus in the Missouri House supported the bill. During last week’s Commission session, county officials received little information about what might be done in the Missouri General Assembly to cushion county governments from the cost of putting in place the tax-relief program and the effect of potential revenue loss on local government agencies.

Senate Bill 3 is being challenged in court, but the measure is scheduled to be on the April 7 ballot. In a simple-majority decision, voters will approve or reject the county putting in place the program.

While county government and other political subdivisions can’t advocate for or against a ballot issue, they can mount an educational effort to inform voters of the potential effect of the proposed tax-relief program on services.

In other matters, County Treasure Mike Feagan reported that the final reimbursement check for the county’s portion of the state’s Motor Fuel Tax came in at $81,314, less than the November amount but more than the December amount last year.

“We did well again,” Feagan said, noting that the tax, which is allocated to the county’s Road Department, totals $937,801 this year. That’s $75,716 more than the total amount received in 2024.

Regarding the Road Department, Gasconade County hit a milestone in the past week.

“We hit 100 culverts (installed) this year. And the year isn’t over,” said Presiding Commissioner Tim Schulte, R-Hermann.

The number of culverts being replaced on the county’s 400-plus miles of roads far exceeds the amount installed in previous years.

The special session Monday also will include a pre-construction conference with Howe Company engineers and JK Unnerstall for work on the county’s section of the Rock Island Trail east of the Highway 19 overpass toward the Soap Creek bridge. That work will be funded through a state Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) grant of about $500,000.