CACHE COUNTY – With all procedural hurtles and legal niceties checked off, the members of the Cache County Council approved a modest budget for 2026 at their final meeting of the year on Dec. 9.
While denying salary increases for themselves and accepting $2.8 million in budget cuts proposed by County Executive George Daines, the budget for next year will include an 18 percent property tax increase that council members hope will raise more than $3.7 million in new revenues to meet the inflationary cost of personnel and public safety.
With amendments proposed on Dec. 9, the final budget for 2026 approved by council members was more than $120.5 million, including $4.8 million allocated to the Logan Cache Airport Authority and airport capital projects.
Despite increased expenses, the members of the council held the line on proposed spending by department heads, delivering a budget for the next calendar that that was actually slight less than for 2025, which was more than $121 million.
The council members were able to side-step one issue of public concern about continued funding for the Cache County Library in Providence.
The proposal to cut the County Library’s meager funding of $235,000 a year was initially part of an effort by Daines to cope with a $7.6 million shortfall in revenues projected in the county’s budget for 2026.
The council members eventually accepted most of Daines’ recommended $2.8 million in budget cuts, but balked at eliminating all of the library’s funding in the face of a storm of public protest.
At the meeting on Dec. 9, council member Kathryn Beus alone admitted to receiving hundreds of e-mails from patrons in support of continued funding for the library.
As a compromise, the council members endorsed Daines’ revised plan to fund the County Library facility for six-months to the tune of $134,000, while the county investigates alternative funding sources.
Those alternatives include coordinating with Providence resident Natalie DeFriez, who volunteered at a previous council meeting on Dec. 2 to mount a public campaign to find sufficient donors to entirely alleviate the county’s financial burden of funding the library.
Council member Mark Hurd was tasked to begin that coordination effort.
The approved budget lists General Fund expenditures of more than $65.5 million, including a cost-of-living pay increase for county employees varying from 3 to 4 percent as well as a 10 percent pay increase for Sheriff’s Department public safety personnel.