DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners take up a $24.2 million FY27 budget at an August 24 public hearing, a balanced plan that shifts money toward emergency dispatch and the jail and away from planning and building.
The funds that property taxes support balance exactly, at $12,051,680 in revenue against the same amount in requests, about 5 percent more than this year. Property taxes cover $7,353,192 of it, up 6.36 percent.
Most of that is the general fund, which pays for the county's day-to-day operations and rises about 7 percent to $10.3 million. Another $12.2 million sits outside the property-tax side altogether, in funds that run on their own fees and levies like solid waste and road and bridge, bringing the county's total to $24,248,677. Idaho's property-tax cap limits how much the county can raise on the property-tax side each year.
The legal notice the county ran in the Teton Valley News on August 12 and 19 shows that same general fund shrinking, from $11.6 million to $10.3 million. The budget summary in the same hearing packet shows it growing, from $9.6 million.
Both describe the same year. The difference is about $2 million the county paid out on a lawsuit in the current budget, which the legal notice counts and the summary leaves out. "When compared to the FY26 budget, the FY27 budget appears to be a budget reduction," Clerk Kim Keeley wrote in her memo to the board. "However, when you remove the $2 million lawsuit payment, the FY27 budget represents a continuation of County services with moderate operational growth, targeted capital investment, and increased personnel costs."
On that basis Keeley puts the increase at about 6 percent, with 60 percent of it coming from personnel.
The jail budget climbs 137 percent to $635,250, up from $267,496. Almost all of the increase is prisoner housing, budgeted at $600,000 against $225,000 the year before. Teton County has no jail of its own and pays Madison County to hold its inmates, so the line tracks what that contract costs.
The county budgeted $155,196 for the jail in fiscal 2025 and spent $270,481; it budgeted $267,496 for 2026 and had spent $357,978 by late July, with two months left in the fiscal year. The 2027 figure sets the line closer to those actual costs.
